He said to her one
day:
"You've done right, old girl. There's nothing I like so much as to
have a little to chuck away. And I can do it, thanks to you."
That was really, she said, the happiest moment of her life. And he,
seeming to realize it, had ventured to pat her on the shoulder. He
had, ostensibly, come in to borrow a safety-pin of her. And the
occasion of her boxing Maisie's ears, had, after it was over,
riveted in her mind the idea that there was no intrigue between
Edward and Mrs Maidan. She imagined that, from henceforward,
all that she had to do was to keep him well supplied with money
and his mind amused with pretty girls. She was convinced that he
was coming back to her. For that month she no longer repelled his
timid advances that never went very far. For he certainly made
timid advances. He patted her on the shoulder; he whispered into
her ear little jokes about the odd figures that they saw up at the
Casino. It was not much to make a little joke--but the whispering
of it was a precious intimacy. . . .
And then--smash--it all went. It went to pieces at the moment
when Florence laid her hand upon Edward's wrist, as it lay on the
glass sheltering the manuscript of the Protest, up in the high tower
with the shutters where the sunlight here and there streamed in.
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