Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/446

432 we can't get out of it. My idea would be a nice little place—somewhere in the south—where she and you would be together and as good as any one else. And I should be as good too, don't you see? for I should n't live with you, but I should be close to you—just round the corner, and it would be just the same. My idea would be that it should all be perfectly open and frank. Honi soit qui mal y pense, don't you know? You're the best thing—you and what we can do for you—that either of us has ever known:" he came back to that. "When I say to her 'Give her up, come,' she lets me have it bang in the face. 'Give her up yourself!' It's the same old vicious circle; and when I say vicious I don't mean a pun or a what-d'ye-call-'em. Mrs. Wix is the obstacle—I mean, you know, if she has affected you. She has affected me, and yet here I am. I never was in such a tight place: please believe it 's only that that makes me put it to you as I do. My dear child, isn't that—to put it so—just the way out of it? That came to me yesterday, in London, after Mrs. Beale had gone: I had the most infernal, atrocious day. 'Go straight over and put it to her: let her choose, freely, her own self.'