Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/385

Rh looked away, would guarantee her moral sense! She looked away, but her companion said nothing for so long that she at last turned her head again. Then she saw the straighteners all blurred with tears which, after a little, seemed to have sprung from her own eyes. There were tears in fact on both sides of the spectacles, and they were even so thick that it was presently all Maisie could do to make out through them that slowly, finally, Mrs. Wix put forth a hand. It was the material pressure that settled that, and even, at the end of some minutes, more things besides. It settled in its own way one thing in particular, which, though often between them, heaven knows, hovered round and hung over, was yet to be established without the shadow of an attenuating smile. Oh, there was no gleam of levity, as little of humor as of deprecation, in the long time they now sat together, or in the way in which, at some unmeasured point of it, Mrs. Wix became distinct enough for her own dignity and yet not loud enough for the snoozing old women.

"I adore him. I adore him."

Maisie took it well in; so well that in a moment more she would have answered,