It was the most extraordinary thing in the world: in the intensity of
her excitement she not only by illumination understood all their French,
but fell into it with an active perfection. She addressed herself
straight to the porter. _"Prenny, prenny. Oh prenny!"_
_"Ah si mademoiselle le veut--!"_ He waited there for the money.
But Sir Claude only stared--stared at her with his white face. "You HAVE
chosen then? You'll let her go?"
Maisie carried her eyes wistfully to the train, where, amid cries of
_"En voiture, en voiture!"_ heads were at windows and doors banging
loud. The porter was pressing. _"Ah vous n'avez plus le temps!"_
"It's going--it's going!" cried Maisie.
They watched it move, they watched it start; then the man went his way
with a shrug. "It's gone!" Sir Claude said.
Maisie crept some distance up the platform; she stood there with her
back to her companion, following it with her eyes, keeping down tears,
nursing her pink and yellow books. She had had a real fright but had
fallen back to earth. The odd thing was that in her fall her fear too
had been dashed down and broken. It was gone. She looked round at last,
from where she had paused, at Sir Claude's, and then saw that his
wasn't. It sat there with him on the bench to which, against the wall of
the station, he had retreated, and where, leaning back and, as she
thought, rather queer, he still waited. She came down to him and he
continued to offer his ineffectual intention of pleasantry. "Yes, I've
chosen," she said to him. "I'll let her go if you--if you--"