only to
put her chance clearly and kindly before her. "May I think?" she finally
asked.

"Certainly, certainly. But how long?"

"Oh only a little while," she said meekly.

He had for a moment the air of wishing to look at it as if it were the
most cheerful prospect in the world. "But what shall we do while you're
thinking?" He spoke as if thought were compatible with almost any
distraction.

There was but one thing Maisie wished to do, and after an instant she
expressed it. "Have we got to go back to the hotel?"

"Do you want to?"

"Oh no."

"There's not the least necessity for it." He bent his eyes on his watch;
his face was now very grave. "We can do anything else in the world." He
looked at her again almost as if he were on the point of saying that
they might for instance start off for Paris. But even while she wondered
if that were not coming he had a sudden drop. "We can take a walk."

She was all ready, but he sat there as if he had still something more to
say. This too, however, didn't come; so she herself spoke. "I think I
should like to see Mrs. Wix first."

"Before you decide? All right--all right." He had put on his hat, but
he had still to light a cigarette. He smoked a minute, with his head
thrown back, looking at the ceiling; then he said: "There's one thing
to remember--I've a right to impress it on you: we stand absolutely in
the place of your parents. It's their defection, their extraordinary
baseness, that has made our responsibility. Never was a young person
more directly committed and confided." He appeared to say this over, at
the ceiling, through his smoke, a little for his own illumination. It
carried him after a pause somewhat further. "Though I admit it was to
each of us separately."

He gave her so at that moment and in that attitude the sense of wanting,
as it were, to be on her side--on the side of what would be in every way
most right and wise and charming for her--that she felt a sudden desire
to prove herself not less delicate and magnanimous, not less solicitous
for his own interests. What were these but that of the "regularity"
he had just before spoken of? "It WAS to each of you separately," she
accordingly with much earnestness remarked. "But don't you remember? I
brought you together."

He jumped up with a delighted laugh. "Remember? Rather! You brought us
together, you brought us together. Come!"

XXXI

She remained out with him for a time of which she could