't likely, for he can't make out why I told you."

"You didn't tell ME, you know," said Mitchy. "You told Mrs. Brook."

"Well, SHE told you, and her talking about it is the unpleasant idea. He
can't get her down anyhow."

"Poor Mrs. Brook!" Mitchy meditated.

"Poor Mrs. Brook!" his companion echoed.

"But I thought you said," he went on, "that he doesn't mind."

"YOUR knowing? Well, I dare say he doesn't. But he doesn't want a lot of
gossip and chatter."

"Oh!" said Mitchy with meekness.

"I may absolutely take it from you then," Vanderbank presently resumed,
"that Nanda has her idea?"

"Oh she didn't tell me so. But it's none the less my belief."

"Well," Vanderbank at last threw off, "I feel it for myself. If only
because she always knows everything," he pursued without looking at
Mitchy. "She always knows everything, everything."

"Everything, everything." Mitchy got up.

"She told me so herself yesterday," said Van.

"And she told ME so to-day."

Vanderbank's hesitation might have shown he was struck with this. "Well,
I don't think it's information that either of us required. But of course
she--can't help it," he added. "Everything, literally everything, in
London, in the world she lives in, is in the air she breathes--so that
the longer SHE'S in it the more she'll know."

"The more she'll know, certainly," Mitchy acknowledged. "But she isn't
in it, you see, down here."

"No. Only she appears to have come down with such accumulations. And she
won't be here for ever," Vanderbank hastened to mention. "Certainly not
if you marry her."

"But isn't that at the same time," Vanderbank asked, "just the
difficulty?"

Mitchy looked vague. "The difficulty?"

"Why as a married woman she'll be steeped in it again."

"Surely"--oh Mitchy could be candid! "But the difference will be that
for a married woman it won't matter. It only matters for girls," he
plausibly continued--"and then only for those on whom no one takes
pity."

"The trouble is," said Vanderbank--but quite as if uttering only a
general truth--"that it's just a thing that may sometimes operate as
a bar to pity. Isn't it for the non-marrying girls that it doesn't
particularly matter? For the others it's such an odd preparation."

"Oh I don't mind it!" Mitchy declared.

Vanderbank visibly demurred. "Ah but your choice--!"

"Is such a different sort of thing?" Mitchy, for the half-hour, in the
ambiguous dusk, had never looked more droll. "