THE OUTSIDE WORLD
Maggie had a week.
She did not need it.From the first half-hour after Martin's leaving her her mind was made up.This question of marriage did not, on further reflection, very greatly disturb her.She had known, in her time, a number of married people and they had been invariably unhappy and quarrelsome.The point seemed to be that you should be, in some way, near the person whom you loved, and she had only loved one person in all her life, and intended never to love another.Even this question of love was not nearly so tangled for her as it would be for any more civilised person.She knew very little about marriage and only in the most sordid fashion about sexual relations which were definitely connected in her mind with drunken peasants and her father's cook.They had nothing at all to do with Martin.
The opinion of the world was an unknown factor in her vision, she only knew of the opinion of her aunts and Miss Warlock and with these she was already in rebellion.
She would have been in great trouble had she supposed that this woman still loved Martin and needed him, but that, from what Martin had said, was obviously not so.No, it was all quite clear.They would escape together, out of this tangle of unnatural mysteries and warnings, and live happily for ever after in the country.
As to Martin's self-portrait, that did not greatly distress her.She had never supposed that he or any one else was "good." She had never known a "good" person.Nor did it occur to her, in her pristine state of savagery, that you loved any one the less for their drawbacks.She would rather be with Martin at his worst than with any one else at their best--that was all.
Half-an-hour was enough time to settle the whole affair.She then waited patiently until the end of the week.She did not quite know how she would arrange a meeting, but that would, she expected, arrange itself.
Two events occurred that filled her mind and made the week pass quickly.One was that she received an answer to her adventurous letter, the other was a remarkable conversation with Miss Caroline Smith.The answer to her letter was lying on her plate when she came down to breakfast, and Aunt Elizabeth was watching it with an excited stare.