"Then to live with ME."
The words made her friend jump. "You give me up? You break with me for
ever? You turn me into the street?"
Maisie, though gasping a little, bore up under the rain of challenges.
"Those, it seems to me, are the things you do to ME."
Mrs. Wix made little of her valour. "I can promise you that, whatever
I do, I shall never let you out of my sight! You ask me why it's
immorality when you've seen with your own eyes that Sir Claude has felt
it to be so to that dire extent that, rather than make you face the
shame of it, he has for months kept away from you altogether? Is it any
more difficult to see that the first time he tries to do his duty he
washes his hands of HER--takes you straight away from her?"
Maisie turned this over, but more for apparent consideration than from
any impulse to yield too easily. "Yes, I see what you mean. But at
that time they weren't free." She felt Mrs. Wix rear up again at the
offensive word, but she succeeded in touching her with a remonstrant
hand. "I don't think you know how free they've become."
"I know, I believe, at least as much as you do!"