Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/355

Sir Claude's flight which should take, on Mrs. Wix's part, the form of a refusal to avail herself of the facilities he had so bravely ordered. It was in fact impossible to escape them; it was, in the good lady's own phrase, ridiculous to go on foot when you had a carriage prancing at the door. Everything about them pranced, the very waiters, even, as they presented the dishes to which, from a similar sense of the absurdity of perversity, Mrs. Wix helped herself with a freedom that spoke to Maisie quite as much of her depletion as of her logic. Her appetite was a sign to her companion of a great many things, and testified not less, on the whole, to her general than to her particular conditions. She had arrears of dinner to make up, and it was touching that in a dinnerless state her moral passion should have burned so clear. She partook largely, as a refuge from depression, and yet the opportunity to partake was just a mark of the sinister symptoms that depressed her. The affair was in short a combat, in which the baser element triumphed, between her refusal to be bought off and her consent to be clothed and fed. It was not, at any rate, to be gainsaid that there was comfort for her in the develop-