What might have happened she would never know.She felt a touch on her sleeve, and, turning round, saw Aunt Anne's eyes looking up at her out of a face that was so white and the skin of it so tightly drawn that it was like the face of a dead woman.
"I'm in great pain, Maggie.I think you must take me home," she heard her aunt say.
Aunt Anne took her arm, they went out followed by Aunt Elizabeth.
The fresh evening air that blew upon Maggie's forehead seemed suddenly to make of the Chapel a dim, incredible phantom; faintly from behind the closed door came the echo of the hymn.The street was absolutely still--no human being was in sight, only an old cab stationed close at hand waiting for a possible customer; into this they got.The pale, almost white, evening sky, with stars in sheets and squares and pools of fire, shone with the clear radiance of glass above them.Maggie could see the stars through the dirty windows of the cab.
They were quite silent all the way home.Aunt Anne sitting up very straight, motionless, her fingers still on Maggie's arm.
Inside the house there was Jane.She seemed at once to under-stand, and, with Aunt Elizabeth, led Aunt Anne up the dark stairs.
They disappeared, leaving Maggie alone in the hall, whose only sound was the ticking clock from the stairs and only light the dim lamp above the door.