He flung Mr.Bennett out of the bedroom window, breaking his leg and his nose, and that was why every one knew the story.What he said to Caroline was uncertain.He did not, however, pack her off, as Miss Purves said he should have done, but rather kept her in the big ugly house, just as he had done before, only now without the young men, the young women, the champagne and the flowers.
"I must go and see her," said Maggie when she heard this story.
Grace turned the strange pale yellow that was her colour when she was disturbed.
"Maggie," she said, "I warn you that if you go to see this abandoned woman you will be insulting Paul and myself before the whole town.""She is my friend," said Maggie.
"She is a wicked woman," said Grace, breathing very heavily, "and you're a wicked woman if you go to see her.You have already made Paul miserable.""That is untrue," Maggie said fiercely."It is I that have been miserable.Not that it hasn't been my own fault.I should never have married Paul.""No, you should not," said Grace, breathing as though she had been running very hard."And for that I was partly to blame.But fancy what you've done since you've been with us! Just fancy! It's terrible...never a greater mistake...never, never."Maggie tossed her head."Well, if it was a mistake," she said, "the end of pretending has come at last.I've been trying for nearly two years now to go your way and Paul's.I can't do it.I can't alter myself.I've tried, and I can't.It's no use.Grace, we'd never get on.I see it's been hopeless from the first.But you shan't make Paul hate me.You've been trying your hardest, but you shan't succeed.I know that I'm stupid and careless, but it's no use my pretending to be good and quiet and obedient.I'm not good.I'm not quiet.I'm not obedient.I'm going to be myself now.I'm going to have the friends I want and do the things I want."Grace moved back as though she thought that Maggie were going to strike her.
"You're wicked," she said."What about those letters in your drawer?
You've never loved Paul."
"So you've been opening my drawers?" said Maggie."You're worse than I, Grace.I never opened any one's drawers nor read letters Ishouldn't.But it doesn't matter.There's nothing I want to hide.
Paul knows all about it.I'm not ashamed.""No, you're not," Grace's eyes were large with terror."You're ashamed at nothing.You've made every one in the place laugh at us.
You've ruined Paul's life here--yes, you have.But you don't care.
Do you think I mind for myself? But I love Paul, and I've looked after him all his life, and he was happy until you came--yes, he was.You've made us all laughed at.You're bad all through, Maggie, and the laws of the Church aren't anything to you at all."There was a pause.Maggie, a little calmer, realised Grace, who had sunk into a chair.She saw that stout middle-aged woman with the flat expressionless face and the dull eyes.She saw the flabby hands nervously trembling, and she longed suddenly to be kind and affectionate.
"Oh, Grace," she cried."I know I've been everything I shouldn't, only don't you see I can't give up my friends? And I told Paul before we married that I'd loved some one else and wasn't religious.
But perhaps it isn't too late.Let's be friends.I'll try harder than ever before--"Then she saw, in the way that Grace shrank back, her eyes staring with the glazed fascination that a bird has for a snake, that there was more than dislike and jealousy here, there was the wild unreasoning fear that a child has for the dark.
"Am I like that?" was her own instinctive shuddering thought.Then, almost running, she rushed up to her bedroom.