Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/434

on his answer about Mrs. Beale, disbelieve him. She seemed to see at present, to touch across the table, as if by laying her hand on it, what he had meant when he confessed on those several occasions to fear. Why was such a man so often afraid? It must have begun to come to her now that there was one thing just such a man above all could be afraid of. He could be afraid of himself. His fear, at all events, was there; his fear was sweet to her, beautiful and tender to her, was having coffee and buttered rolls and talk and laughter that were no talk and laughter at all, with her; his fear was in his jesting, postponing, perverting voice; it was in just this make-believe way he had brought her out to imitate the old London playtimes, to imitate indeed a relation that had wholly changed, a relation that she had, with her very eyes, seen in the act of change when the day before, in the salon, Mrs. Beale rose suddenly before her. She rose before her, for that matter, now, and even before their refreshment appeared Maisie arrived at the straight question for which, on their entrance, his first word had given opportunity. "Are we going to have déjeuner with Mrs. Beale?"