Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/374

360 lap of the waves, gave Mrs. Wix a fresh fulcrum for her challenge. "Have you absolutely none at all?"

She had no need now, as to the question itself at least, to be specific; that, on the other hand, was the eventual result of their quiet conjoined apprehension of the thing that—well, yes, since they must face it—Maisie absolutely and appallingly had so little of. This marked more particularly the moment of the child's perceiving that her friend had risen to a level which might—till superseded, at all events—pass almost for sublime. Nothing more remarkable had taken place in the first heat of her own departure, no phenomenon of perception more inscrutable by our rough method, than her vision, the rest of that Boulogne day, of the manner in which she figured. I so despair of tracing her steps that I must crudely give you my word for its being, from this time on, a picture literally present to her. Mrs. Wix saw her as a little person knowing so extraordinarily much that, for the account to be taken of it, what she still did n't know would be ridiculous if it had n't been embarrassing. Mrs. Wix was in truth more than ever qualified to meet embarrassment; I am