madness like hydrophobia. His relations
with Mrs Basil had not seemed to him to imply moral turpitude of a
gross kind. The husband had been complaisant; they had really loved each
other; his wife was very cruel to him and had long ceased to be a wife
to him. He thought that Mrs Basil had been his soul-mate, separated from
him by an unkind fate--something sentimental of that sort.

But he discovered that, whilst he was still writing long weekly letters
to Mrs Basil, he was beginning to be furiously impatient if he missed
seeing Maisie Maidan during the course of the day. He discovered himself
watching the doorways with impatience; he discovered that he disliked
her boy husband very much for hours at a time. He discovered that he
was getting up at unearthly hours in order to have time, later in the
morning, to go for a walk with Maisie Maidan. He discovered himself
using little slang words that she used and attaching a sentimental value
to those words. These, you understand, were discoveries that came so
late that he could do nothing but drift. He was losing weight; his eyes
were beginning to fall in; he had touches of bad fever. He was, as he
described it, pipped.

And, one ghastly hot day, he suddenly heard himself say to Leonora:

"I say, couldn't we take Mrs Maidan with us to Europe and drop her at
Nauheim?"

He hadn't had the least idea of saying that to Leonora. He had merely
been standing, looking at an illustrated paper, waiting for dinner.
Dinner was twenty minutes late or the Ashburnhams would not have been
alone together. No, he hadn't had the least idea of framing that speech.
He had just been standing in a silent agony of fear, of longing, of
heat, of fever. He was thinking that they were going back to Branshaw in
a month and that Maisie Maidan was going to remain behind and die. And
then, that had come out.

The punkah swished in the darkened room; Leonora lay exhausted and
motionless in her cane lounge; neither of them stirred. They were both
at that time very ill in indefinite ways.

And then Leonora said:

"Yes. I promised it to Charlie Maidan this afternoon. I have offered to
pay her ex's myself."

Edward just saved himself from saying: "Good God!" You see, he had not
the least idea of what Leonora knew--about Maisie, about Mrs Basil, even
about La Dolciquita. It was a pretty enigmatic situation for him. It
struck him that Leonora must be intending to manage his loves as she
managed his money a