im,
you know, very much as Mr. Longdon figures to me. Mr. Longdon doesn't
somehow get into me. Yet I do, I think, into him. But we don't matter!"

"'We'?"--Nanda, with her eyes on him, echoed it.

"Mr. Longdon and I. It can't be helped, I suppose," he went on, for
Tishy, with sociable sadness, "but it IS short innings."

Mrs. Grendon, who was clearly credulous, looked positively frightened.
"Ah but, my dear, thank you! I haven't begun to LIVE."

"Well, _I_ have--that's just where it is," said Harold. "Thank you all
the more, old Van, for the tip."

There was an announcement just now at the door, and Tishy turned to meet
the Duchess, with Harold, almost as if he had been master of the house,
figuring but a step behind her. "Don't mind HER," Vanderbank immediately
said to the companion with whom he was left, "but tell me, while I still
have hold of you, who wrote my name on the French novel that I noticed a
few minutes since in the other room?"

Nanda at first only wondered. "If it's there--didn't YOU?"

He just hesitated. "If it were here you'd see if it's my hand."

Nanda faltered, and for somewhat longer. "How should I see? What do I
know of your hand?"

He looked at her hard. "You HAVE seen it."

"Oh--so little!" she replied with a faint smile.

"Do you mean I've not written to you for so long? Surely I did in--when
was it?"

"Yes, when? But why SHOULD you?" she asked in quite a different tone.

He was not prepared on this with the right statement, and what he did
after a moment bring out had for the occasion a little the sound of the
wrong. "The beauty of YOU is that you're too good; which for me is but
another way of saying you're too clever. You make no demands. You let
things go. You don't allow in particular for the human weakness that
enjoys an occasional glimpse of the weakness of others."

She had deeply attended to him. "You mean perhaps one doesn't show
enough what one wants?"

"I think that must be it. You're so fiendishly proud."

She appeared again to wonder. "Not too much so, at any rate, only to
want from YOU--"

"Well, what?"

"Why, what's pleasant for yourself," she simply said.

"Oh dear, that's poor bliss!" he returned. "How does it come then," he
next said, "that with this barrenness of our intercourse I know so well
YOUR hand?"

A series of announcements had meanwhile been made, with guests arriving
to match them, and Nanda's eyes at this moment engaged themselves with
Mr