think,' she said, 'that everything nice spoils your
hand.'

'I don't think. It's the law,--just the same as it was at Mrs.
Jennett's.

Everything that is nice does spoil your hand. I'm glad you see so
clearly.'

'I don't like the view.'

'Nor I. But--have got orders: what can do? Are you strong enough to face
it alone?'

'I suppose I must.'

'Let me help, darling. We can hold each other very tight and try to
walk straight. We shall blunder horribly, but it will be better than
stumbling apart. Maisie, can't you see reason?'

'I don't think we should get on together. We should be two of a trade,
so we should never agree.'

'How I should like to meet the man who made that proverb! He lived in a
cave and ate raw bear, I fancy. I'd make him chew his own arrow-heads.

Well?'

'I should be only half married to you. I should worry and fuss about my
work, as I do now. Four days out of the seven I'm not fit to speak to.'

'You talk as if no one else in the world had ever used a brush.
D'you suppose that I don't know the feeling of worry and bother and
can't-get-at-ness? You're lucky if you only have it four days out of the
seven. What difference would that make?'

'A great deal--if you had it too.'

'Yes, but I could respect it. Another man might not. He might laugh at
you. But there's no use talking about it. If you can think in that way
you can't care for me--yet.'

The tide had nearly covered the mud-banks and twenty little ripples
broke on the beach before Maisie chose to speak.

'Dick,' she said slowly, 'I believe very much that you are better than I
am.'

'This doesn't seem to bear on the argument--but in what way?'

'I don't quite know, but in what you said about work and things; and
then you're so patient. Yes, you're better than I am.'

Dick considered rapidly the murkiness of an average man's life. There
was nothing in the review to fill him with a sense of virtue. He lifted
the hem of the cloak to his lips.

'Why,' said Maisie, making as though she had not noticed, 'can you see
things that I can't? I don't believe what you believe; but you're right,
I believe.'

'If I've seen anything, God knows I couldn't have seen it but for you,
and I know that I couldn't have said it except to you. You seemed to
make everything clear for a minute; but I don't practice what I preach.
You would help me.... There are only us two in the world for all
purposes, and--and you like to have me with you?'

'Of c