cted in the
dining-room. They mounted to their apartments for a brush before the
glass, and it was Maisie who, in passing and from a vain impulse,
threw open the white and gold door. She was thus first to utter the
sound that brought Mrs. Wix almost on top of her, as by the other
accident it would have brought her on top of Mrs. Wix. It had at any
rate the effect of leaving them bunched together in a strained stare
at their new situation. This situation had put on in a flash the
bright form of Mrs. Beale: she stood there in her hat and her jacket,
amid bags and shawls, smiling and holding out her arms. If she had
just arrived it was a different figure from either of the two that for
THEIR benefit, wan and tottering and none too soon to save life, the
Channel had recently disgorged. She was as lovely as the day that had
brought her over, as fresh as the luck and the health that attended
her: it came to Maisie on the spot that she was more beautiful than
she had ever been. All this was too quick to count, but there was
still time in it to give the child the sense of what had kindled the
light. That leaped out of the open arms, the open eyes, the open
mouth; it leaped out with Mrs. Beale's loud cry at her: "I'm free,
I'm free!"

XXVII

The greatest wonder of all was the way Mrs. Beale addressed her
announcement, so far as could be judged, equally to Mrs. Wix, who, as
if from sudden failure of strength, sank into a chair while Maisie
surrendered to the visitor's embrace. As soon as the child was liberated
she met with profundity Mrs. Wix's stupefaction and actually was able to
see that while in a manner sustaining the encounter her face yet seemed
with intensity to say: "Now, for God's sake, don't crow 'I told you
so!'" Maisie was somehow on the spot aware of an absence of disposition
to crow; it had taken her but an extra minute to arrive at such a quick
survey of the objects surrounding Mrs. Beale as showed that among them
was no appurtenance of Sir Claude's. She knew his dressing-bag now--oh
with the fondest knowledge!--and there was an instant during which its
not being there was a stroke of the worst news. She was yet to learn
what it could be to recognise in some lapse of a sequence the proof of
an extinction, and therefore remained unaware that this momentary pang
was a foretaste of the experience of death. It of course yielded in
a flash to Mrs. Beale's brightness, it gasped itself away in her own
instant