aradox!" Vanderbank patiently sighed. "You're down
for a fine."

It was with less of the patience perhaps that Mrs. Brook took this up.
"Yes, on that we ARE stiff. Five pounds, please."

Mitchy drew out his pocket-book even though he explained. "What I mean
is that I don't give out the great thing." With which he produced a
crisp banknote.

"DON'T you?" asked Vanderbank, who, having taken it from him to hand to
Mrs. Brook, held it a moment, delicately, to accentuate the doubt.

"The great thing's the sacred terror. It's you who give THAT out."

"Oh!"--and Vanderbank laid the money on the small stand at Mrs. Brook's
elbow.

"Ain't I right, Mrs. Brook?--doesn't he, tremendously, and isn't that
more than anything else what does it?"

The two again, as if they understood each other, gazed in a unity
of interest at their companion, who sustained it with an air clearly
intended as the happy mean between embarrassment and triumph. Then Mrs.
Brook showed she liked the phrase. "The sacred terror! Yes, one feels
it. It IS that."

"The finest case of it," Mitchy pursued, "that I've ever met. So my
moral's sufficiently pointed."

"Oh I don't think it can be said to be that," Vanderbank returned, "till
you've put the whole thing into a box by doing for Nanda what she does
most want you to do."

Mitchy caught on without a shade of wonder. "Oh by proposing to the
Duchess for little Aggie?" He took but an instant to turn it over.
"Well, I WOULD propose--to please Nanda. Only I've never yet quite made
out the reason of her wish."

"The reason is largely," his friend answered, "that, being very fond of
Aggie and in fact extremely admiring her, she wants to do something
good for her and to keep her from anything bad. Don't you know--it's
too charming--she regularly believes in her?" Mitchy, with all his
recognition, vibrated to the touch. "Isn't it too charming?"

"Well then," Vanderbank went on, "she secures for her friend a phoenix
like you, and secures for you a phoenix like her friend. It's hard to
say for which of you she desires most to do the handsome thing. She
loves you both in short"--he followed it up--"though perhaps when one
thinks of it the price she puts on you, Mitchy, in the arrangement, is
a little the higher. Awfully fine at any rate--and yet awfully odd
too--her feeling for Aggie's type, which is divided by such abysses from
her own."

"Ah," laughed Mitchy, "but think then of her feeling for mine!"