Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/314

300 This required to be met, but it was much less to challenge him than for the rich joy of her first discussion of the details of a tour that, after looking at him an instant, she replied: "Well, isn't that the real thing, the thing that when one does come abroad—?" He had turned grave again, and she merely threw that out: it was a way of doing justice to the seriousness of their life. She could n't, moreover, be so much older since yesterday without reflecting that if by this time she probed a little he would recognize that she had done enough for mere patience. There was in fact something in his eyes that suddenly, to her own, made her desertion shabby. Before she could remedy this he had answered her last question, answered it in the way that, of all ways, she had least expected. "The thing it doesn't do not to do? Certainly—Paris is charming. But, my dear fellow, Paris eats your head off. I mean it 's so beastly expensive."

That note gave her a start; it suddenly let in a harder light. Were they poor, then?—that is, was he poor, really poor beyond the pleasantry of apollinaris and cold beef? They had walked to the end of the long jetty that enclosed the harbor, and were looking