She woke suddenly to find some one standing in her open doorway and holding up a candle.That some one was old Martha, looking strange enough in a nightdress, her scanty grey hairs untidily about her neck and a dirty red shawl over her shoulders.Maggie blinked at the light and sat up in bed.
"What is it?" she asked.
"It's your aunt, Miss--Miss Anne.She's very bad.She wants you to go to her."Maggie got out of bed, put on her dressing-gown and slippers and followed the servant.
As she hurried along the dark passage she was still only half-awake;her soul had not returned into her body, but her body was awake and vibrating with the knowledge that the soul was soon coming to it, and coming to it with great news, with the consciousness of a marvellous experience.For at the instant when Martha awoke her she had been dreaming of Martin, dreaming of him physically, so that it was his body against hers, his hand hot and dry in hers cool and soft, his cheek rough and strong against hers smooth and pale.There had been no sentimentality or weakness in her dream.They had been confident and sure and defiant together, and it had been real life for her, so real that this dream life in which now she moved down the shadowy passage was about her as green water is about one when one swims under waves.
It was only slowly, as the cold air of the house at night cleared her eyes and her throat and her breast, that she came to the world consciousness again and surrendered her lover back to the shades and felt a sudden frightened fear lest, after all, she should never really know that ecstasy of which she had just been dreaming.
Nevertheless it was still with a great consciousness of Martin that she entered her aunt's bedroom.Before she entered she turned round for a moment to Martha.