"Yes--you see what you've done."

"How, what I'VE done?"

"You plunge into the woods for change, for solitude," the girl said,
"and the first thing you do is to find me waylaying you in the depths of
the forest. But I really couldn't--if you'll reflect upon it--know you
were coming this way."

He sat there with his position unchanged but with a constant little
shake in the foot that hung down, as if everything--and what she now put
before him not least--was much too pleasant to be reflected on. "May I
smoke a cigarette?"

Nanda waited a little; her friend had taken out his silver case, which
was of ample form, and as he extracted a cigarette she put forth her
hand. "May _I_?" She turned the case over with admiration.

Vanderbank demurred. "Do you smoke with Mr. Longdon?"

"Immensely. But what has that to do with it?"

"Everything, everything." He spoke with a faint ring of impatience. "I
want you to do with me exactly as you do with him."

"Ah that's soon said!" the girl replied in a peculiar tone. "How do you
mean, to 'do'?"

"Well then to BE. What shall I say?" Vanderbank pleasantly wondered
while his foot kept up its motion. "To feel."

She continued to handle the cigarette-case, without, however, having
profited by its contents. "I don't think that as regards Mr. Longdon and
me you know quite so much as you suppose."

Vanderbank laughed and smoked. "I take for granted he tells me
everything."

"Ah but you scarcely take for granted _I_ do!" She rubbed her cheek an
instant with the polished silver and again the next moment turned over
the case. "This is the kind of one I should like."

Her companion glanced down at it. "Why it holds twenty."

"Well, I want one that holds twenty."

Vanderbank only threw out his smoke. "I want so to give you something,"
he said at last, "that, in my relief at lighting on an object that will
do, I will, if you don't look out, give you either that or a pipe."

"Do you mean this particular one?"

"I've had it for years--but even that one if you like it."

She kept it--continued to finger it. "And by whom was it given you?"

At this he turned to her smiling. "You think I've forgotten that too?"

"Certainly you must have forgotten, to be willing to give it away
again."

"But how do you know it was a present?"

"Such things always are--people don't buy them for themselves."

She had now relinquished the object, laying it upon the bench, and
Vanderbank took it up.