you in particular gain."

"I didn't either till she made it all out to me. One sees then, in such
a matter, for one's self. And as everything's gain that isn't loss,
there was nothing I COULD lose. It gets me," Mitchy further explained,
"out of the way."

"Out of the way of what?"

This, Mitchy frankly showed, was more difficult to say, but he in time
brought it out. "Well, of appearing to suggest to you that my existence,
in a prolonged state of singleness, may ever represent for her any real
alternative."

"But alternative to what?"

"Why to being YOUR wife, damn you!" Mitchy, on these words turned away
again, and his companion, in the presence of his renewed dim gyrations,
sat for a minute dumb. Before Van had spoken indeed he was back again.
"Excuse my violence, but of course you really see."

"I'm not pretending anything," Vanderbank said--"but a man MUST
understand. What I catch hold of is that you offer me--in the fact that
you're thus at any rate disposed of--a proof that I, by the same token,
shan't, if I hesitate to 'go in,' have a pretext for saying to myself
that I MAY deprive her--!"

"Yes, precisely," Mitchy now urbanely assented: "of something--in the
shape of a man with MY amount of money--that she may live to regret
and to languish for. My amount of money, don't you see?" he very simply
added, "is nothing to her."

"And you want me to be sure that--so far as I may ever have had a
scruple--she has had her chance and got rid of it."

"Completely," Mitchy smiled.

"Because"--Vanderbank with the aid of his cigar thoughtfully pieced it
out--"that may possibly bring me to the point."

"Possibly!" Mitchy laughed.

He had stood a moment longer, almost as if to see the possibility
develop before his eyes, and had even started at the next sound of his
friend's voice. What Vanderbank in fact brought out, however, only made
him turn his back. "Do you like so very much little Aggie?"

"Well," said Mitchy, "Nanda does. And I like Nanda."

"You're too amazing," Vanderbank mused. His musing had presently the
effect of making him rise; meditation indeed beset him after he was
on his feet. "I can't help its coming over me then that on such an
extraordinary system you must also rather like ME."

"What will you have, my dear Van?" Mitchy frankly asked. "It's the
sort of thing you must be most used to. For at the present
moment--look!--aren't we all at you at once?"

It was as if his dear Van had manag