"
"To-morrow we go to France." He spoke as if he hadn't heard her; but it
didn't prevent her again concurring.
"To-morrow we go to France."
Again he appeared not to have heard her; and after a moment--it was an
effect evidently of the depth of his reflexions and the agitation of
his soul--he also spoke as if he had not spoken before. "I'm free--I'm
free!"
She repeated her form of assent. "You're free--you're free."
This time he did hear her; he fixed her through the darkness with a
grave face. But he said nothing more; he simply stooped a little and
drew her to him--simply held her a little and kissed her goodnight;
after which, having given her a silent push upstairs to Miss Ash, he
turned round again to the black masts and the red lights. Maisie mounted
as if France were at the top.
XXII
The next day it seemed to her indeed at the bottom--down too far, in
shuddering plunges, even to leave her a sense, on the Channel boat, of
the height at which Sir Claude remained and which had never in every way
been so great as when, much in the wet, though in the angle of a screen
of canvas, he sociably sat with his stepdaughter's head in his lap and
that of Mrs. Beale's housemaid fairly pillowed on his breast. Maisie was
surprised to learn as they drew into port that they had had a lovely
passage; but this emotion, at Boulogne, was speedily quenched in others,
above all in the great ecstasy of a larger impression of life. She was
"abroad" and she gave herself up to it, responded to it, in the bright
air, before the pink houses, among the bare-legged fishwives and the
red-legged soldiers, with the instant certitude of a vocation.
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