Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/273

Rh into her dizzy head the long-lost image of Mrs. Wix.

It was singular, but from this time she understood and she followed, followed with the sense of an ample filling-out of any void created by symptoms of avoidance and of flight. Her ecstasy was a thing that had yet more of a face than of a back to turn, a pair of eyes still directed to Mrs. Wix even after the slight surprise of their not finding her, as the journey expanded, either at the London station or at the Folkestone hotel. It took few hours to make the child feel that if she was in neither of these places she was at least everywhere else. Maisie had known all along a great deal, but never so much as she was to know from this moment on, and as she learned in particular during the couple of days that she was to hang in the air, as it were, over the sea which represented, in breezy blueness and with a summer charm, a crossing of more spaces than the Channel. It was given to her at this time to arrive at divinations so ample that I shall have no room for the goal if I attempt to trace the stages; as to which therefore I must be content to say that the fullest expression we may give to Sir Claude's conduct is a poor