ows things, don't you see?
as some fine tourist region shows the placards in the fields and the
posters on the rocks. And what proof can you adduce?" she asked.

Mr. Cashmore had grown restless; he picked a stray thread off the knee
of his trousers. "Ah when you talk about 'adducing'--!" He appeared to
intimate--as with the hint that if she didn't take care she might bore
him--that it was the kind of word he used only in the House of Commons.

"When I talk about it you can't meet me," she placidly returned. But she
fixed him with her weary penetration. "You try to believe what you CAN'T
believe, in order to give yourself excuses. And she does the same--only
less, for she recognises less in general the need of them. She's so
grand and simple."

Poor Mr. Cashmore stared. "Grander and simpler than I, you mean?"

Mrs. Brookenham thought. "Not simpler--no; but very much grander. She
wouldn't, in the case you conceive, recognise really the need of WHAT
you conceive."

Mr. Cashmore wondered--it was almost mystic. "I don't understand you."

Mrs. Brook, seeing it all from dim depths, tracked it further and
further. "We've talked her over so!"

Mr. Cashmore groaned as if too conscious of it. "Indeed we have!"

"I mean WE"--and it was wonderful how her accent discriminated. "We've
talked you too--but of course we talk to every one." She had a pause
through which there glimmered a ray from luminous hours, the inner
intimacy which, privileged as he was, he couldn't pretend to share; then
she broke out almost impatiently: "We're looking after her--leave her to
US!"

His envy of this nearer approach to what so touched him than he could
himself achieve was in his face, but he tried to throw it off. "I doubt
if after all you're good for her."

But Mrs. Brookenham knew. "She's just the sort of person we ARE good
for, and the thing for her is to be with us as much as possible--just
live with us naturally and easily, listen to our talk, feel our
confidence in her, be kept up, don't you know? by the sense of what we
expect of her splendid type, and so, little by little, let our influence
act. What I meant to say just now is that I do perfectly see her taking
what you call presents."

"Well then," Mr. Cashmore enquired, "what do you want more?"

Mrs. Brook hung fire an instant--she seemed on the point of telling him.
"I DON'T see her, as I said, recognising the obligation."

"The obligation--?"

"To give anything back. Anyth