since you don't love me well enough to make everything else indifferent to you - as I do you. Shall I stop the boat, and try to get you out here? I'll tell Lucy that I was mad - and that you hate me - and you shall be clear of me for ever. No one can blame you, because I have behaved unpardonably to you.'

Maggie was paralysed: it was easier to resist Stephen's pleading, than this picture he had called up of himself suffering, while she was vindicated - easier even to turn away from his look of tenderness than from this look of angry misery, that seemed to place her in selfish isolation from him. He had called up a state of feeling in which the reasons which had acted on her conscience seemed to be transmuted into mere self-regard. The indignant fire in her eyes was quenched - and she began to look at him with timid distress. She had reproached him for being hurried into irrevocable trespass - she, who had been so weak herself.

`As if I shouldn't feel what happened to you - just the same' - she said, with reproach of another kind - the reproach of love, asking for more trust. This yielding to the idea of Stephen's suffering was more fatal than the other yielding, because it was less distinguishable from that sense of others' claims which was the moral basis of her resistance.

He felt all the relenting in her look and tone, - it was heaven opening again. He moved to her side, and took her hand, leaning his elbow on the back of the boat, and said nothing. He dreaded to utter another word - he dreaded to make another movement, that might provoke another reproach or denial from her. Life hung on her consent - everything else was hopeless, confused, sickening misery. They glided along in this way, both resting in that silence as in a haven - both dreading lest their feelings should be divided again, till they became aware that the clouds had gathered, and that the slightest perceptible freshening of the breeze was growing and growing, till the whole character of the day was altered.

`You will be chill, Maggie, in this thin dress. Let me raise the cloak over your shoulders. Get up an instant, dearest.'

Maggie obeyed: there was an unspeakable charm in being told what to do, and having everything decided for her. She sat down again, covered with the cloak, and Stephen took to his oars again, making haste; for they must try to get to Torby as fast as they could. Maggie was hardly conscious of having said or done anything decisive. All yielding is attended with a less vivid consciousness than resistance - it is the partial sleep of thought - it is the submergence of our own personality by another. Every influence tended to lull her into acquiescence: that dreamy gliding in the boat, which had lasted for four hours and had brought some weariness and exhaustion - the recoil of her fatigued sensations from the impracticable difficulty of getting out of the boat at this unknown distance from home, and walking for long miles - all helped to bring her into more complete subjection to that strong mysterious charm which made a last parting from Stephen seem the death of all joy - which made the thought of wounding him like the first touch of the torturing iron before which resolution shrank. And then, there was the present happiness of being with him, which was enough to absorb all her languid energy.

Presently Stephen observed a vessel coming after them. Several vessels, among them the steamer to Mudport, had passed them with the early tide, but for the last hour they had seen none. He looked more and more eagerly at this vessel as if a new thought had come into his mind along with it and then he looked at Maggie, hesitatingly.

`Maggie, dearest,' he said, at last, `if this vessel should be going to Mudport or to any convenient place on the coast northward, it would be our best plan to get them to take us on board. You are fatigued - and it may soon rain - it may be a wretched business, getting to Torby in this boat. It's only a trading vessel, but I dare say you can be made tolerably comfortable. We'll take the cushions out of the boat. It is really our best plan. They'll be glad enough to take us - I've got plenty of money about me - I can pay them well.'

Maggie's heart began to beat with reawakened alarm at this new proposition; but she was silent - one course seemed as difficult as another.