Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/455

off from doing while she walked about with him. She must see Mrs. Wix before she could do her sum; therefore the longer before she saw her the more distant would be the ordeal. She met at present no demand whatever of her obligation; she simply plunged, to avoid it, deeper into the company of Sir Claude. She saw nothing that she had seen hitherto—no touch in the foreign picture that had at first been always before her. The only touch was that of Sir Claude's hand, and to feel her own in it was her mute resistance to time. She went about as sightlessly as if he had been leading her blindfold. If they were afraid of themselves it was themselves they would find at the inn. She was certain now that what awaited them there would be to lunch with Mrs. Beale. All her instinct was to avoid that, to draw out their walk, to find pretexts, to take him down upon the sands, to take him to the end of the pier. He said not another word to her about what they had talked of at breakfast, and she had a dim vision of how his way of not letting her see that he was waiting for anything from her would make any one who should know of it, would make Mrs. Wix for instance, think