Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/377

Rh the turn you 've given my life has rendered me, heaven forgive me, capable of saying. Have I lost all delicacy, all decency, all measure of how far and how bad—? It seems to me, mostly, that I have, though I 'm the last of whom you ever would have thought it. I 've just done it for you, precious—not to lose you, which would have been worst of all: so that I 've had to pay with my own innocence—if you do laugh!—for clinging to you and keeping you. Don't let me pay for nothing; don't let me have been thrust for nothing into such horrors and such shames. I never knew anything about them, and I never wanted to know! Now I know too much, too much!"—the poor woman lamented and groaned. "I know so much that, with hearing such talk, I ask myself where I am; and, with uttering it too, which is worse, say to myself that I 'm far, too far, from where I started! I ask myself what I should have thought, with my lost one, if I had heard myself cross the line! There are lines I 've crossed with you that I should have fancied I had come to a pretty pass—!" She gasped at the mere supposition. "I 've gone from one thing to another, and all for the real love of you; and