Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/380

366 white aprons of waiters and the music of a man and a woman who, from beyond the precinct, sent up the strum of a guitar and the drawl of a song about "amour." Maisie knew what "amour" meant too, and wondered if Mrs. Wix did: Mrs. Wix remained within, as still as a mouse and perhaps not reached by the performance. After a while, but not till the musicians had ceased and begun to circulate with a little plate, her pupil came back to her. "Is it a crime?"

Maisie then asked. Mrs. Wix was as prompt as if she had been crouching in a lair. "Branded by the Bible."

"Well, he won't commit a crime."

Mrs. Wix looked at her gloomily. "He 's committing one now."

"Now?"

"In being with her."

Maisie had it on her tongue's end to return once more: "But now he's free;" she remembered, however, in time, that one of the things she had known for the last entire hour was that this made no difference. After that, and as if to turn the right way, she was on the point of a blind dash, a weak reversion to the reminder that it might make