Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/210

196 in front of her, very red and nervously looking about him and whacking his leg with his stick. "Say you love her, Mr. Captain—say it, say it!" she implored.

Mr. Captain's blue eyes fixed themselves very hard. "Of course I love her, damn it, you know."

At this she also jumped up; she had fished out somehow her pocket-handkerchief. "So do I, then—I do, I do, I do!" she passionately cried.

"Then will you come back to her?"

Maisie, staring, stopped the tight little plug of her handkerchief on the way to her eyes. "She won't have me!"

"Yes, she will. She wants you."

"Back at the house—with Sir Claude?"

Again he stopped. "No, not with him. In another place."

They stood looking at each other with an intensity unusual as between a Captain and a little girl. "She won't have me in any place."

"Oh yes, she will—if I ask her."

Maisie's intensity continued. "Shall you be there?"

The Captain's, on the whole, did the same, "Oh yes—some day."

"Then you don't mean now?"