Church followed on the heels of breakfast. Maggy had never been to a Christmas service before. She was tremendously impressed by it. The maternal instinct, always very strong in her, tugged at her heart strings. Once, as she knelt, Alexandra noticed that she was quietly crying. So did Chalfont.
Mrs. Pardiston and Alexandra stopped for Communion. Leaving the motor for them, the other two walked back. Maggy was very quiet. With the latent understanding that made Chalfont attune himself to her mood he too refrained from speech. Presently she burst out:
"Why does the world only appreciate people after they're dead? What is the good of birthdays when you're not alive? That poor little baby! If He came down from Heaven again they'd let Him be born in a manger just the same. Only children ought to go to church on Christmas day. They're good enough. We're not. Do you know, I wondered I wasn't struck dumb for being anywhere near to God. God was in church this morning. I felt Him. I'm not religious, but I believe in God now. Oh, I wish I was good, like Lexie. I wish I didn't know what love is. I wish I'd never been wicked!"
She was wrought-up. She had forgotten the necessity for reticence. Her confession had to come. The restraint of sex was forgotten. If she thought of Chalfont at all at that moment, it was as a brother rather than a man.
"I am, I am," she reiterated. "_I_ ought to have had a baby.... People must have thought the usual things of Mary because of hers.... But she had Him."
"You poor little woman," he said unsteadily.
That he should express compassion where most men would have shown despisement filled her with almost dog-like gratitude.
"I _do_ like you," she said with sudden vehemence. "If I had been dear Mrs. Lambert I would have loved you."
Like a passing cloud, the strange emotional mood soon left her. Her volatile spirits rose again. By the time she had taken Onions for a scamper in the grounds she was quite her old self. Chalfont, watching her flitting here and there, thought only of her rapturous enjoyment of innocent pleasures, and succeeded for a little while in forgetting that such a person as Woolf with his sullying associations was in existence.
The day passed with dream-like swiftness for the two girls. They snatched at its fleeting pleasures according to their temperaments. To Alexandra it was a delightful break in a life which she was beginning to loathe, one for which she could not be too grateful. Its very evanescence caused her to enjoy it with temperate zest. Maggy's livelier feelings made her grasp at all it brought forth with both hands. To her it was a glimpse into fairyland, or at least a world in which she classed herself a complete outsider.