't tell me, I
will come as often as I can till I do see you.«
    »I think it must be so, then,« said Maggie, »for I can't be quite certain of
coming here any particular evening.«
    Maggie felt a great relief in adjourning the decision. She was free now to
enjoy the minutes of companionship; she almost thought she might linger a
little; the next time they met she should have to pain Philip by telling him her
determination.
    »I can't help thinking,« she said, looking smilingly at him, after a few
moments of silence, »how strange it is that we should have met and talked to
each other, just as if it had been only yesterday when we parted at Lorton. And
yet we must both be very much altered in those five years - I think it is five
years. How was it you seemed to have a sort of feeling that I was the same
Maggie? - I was not quite so sure that you would be the same: I know you are so
clever, and you must have seen and learnt so much to fill your mind: I was not
quite sure you would care about me now.«
    »I have never had any doubt that you would be the same whenever I might see
you,« said Philip. »I mean, the same in everything that made me like you better
than any one else. I don't want to explain that: I don't think any of the
strongest effects our natures are susceptible of can ever be explained. We can
neither detect the process by which they are arrived at, nor the mode in which
they act on us. The greatest of painters only once painted a mysteriously divine
child; he couldn't have told how he did it, and we can't tell why we feel it to
be divine. I think there are stores laid up in our human nature that our
understandings can make no complete inventory of. Certain strains of music
affect me so strangely - I can never hear them without their changing my whole
attitude of mind for a time, and if the effect would last, I might be capable of
heroisms.«
    »Ah! I know what you mean about music - I feel so,« said Maggie, clasping
her hands with her old impetuosity. »At least,« she added, in a saddened tone,
»I used to feel so when I had any music: I never have any now except the organ
at church.«
    »And you long
