u went away. He's to call this afternoon."

"And you want to see him alone?"

Mrs. Brook thought. "I don't think I want to see him at all."

"Then your keeping him below--?"

"Is so that he shan't burst in till I know. It's YOU, my dear, I want to
see."

Mitchy glared about. "Well, don't take it ill if, in return for that, I
say I myself want to see every one. I could have done even just now with
a little more of Edward."

Mrs. Brook, in her own manner and with a slow headshake, looked lovely.
"_I_ couldn't." Then she puzzled it out with a pause. "It even does come
over me that if you don't mind--!"

"What, my dear woman," said Mitchy encouragingly, "did I EVER mind? I
assure you," he laughed, "I haven't come back to begin!"

At this, suddenly dropping everything else, she laid her hand on him.
"Mitchy love, ARE you happy?"

So for a moment they stood confronted. "Not perhaps as YOU would have
tried to make me."

"Well, you've still GOT me, you know."

"Oh," said Mitchy, "I've got a great deal. How, if I really look at it,
can a man of my peculiar nature--it IS, you know, awfully peculiar--NOT
be happy? Think, if one is driven to it for instance, of the breadth of
my sympathies."

Mrs. Brook, as a result of thinking, appeared for a little to demur.
"Yes--but one mustn't be too much driven to it. It's by one's sympathies
that one suffers. If you should do that I couldn't bear it."

She clearly evoked for Mitchy a definite image. "It WOULD be funny,
wouldn't it? But you wouldn't have to. I'd go off and do it alone
somewhere--in a dark room, I think, or on a desert island; at any rate
where nobody should see. Where's the harm moreover," he went on, "of
any suffering that doesn't bore one, as I'm sure, however much its outer
aspect might amuse some others, mine wouldn't bore me? What I should
do in my desert island or my dark room, I feel, would be just to
dance about with the thrill of it--which is exactly the exhibition of
ludicrous gambols that I would fain have arranged to spare you. I assure
you, dear Mrs. Brook," he wound up, "that I'm not in the least bored
now. Everything's so interesting."

"You're beautiful!" she vaguely interposed.

But he pursued without heeding: "Was perhaps what you had in your head
that _I_ should see him--?"

She came back but slowly, however, to the moment. "Mr. Longdon? Well,
yes. You know he can't bear ME--"

"Yes, yes"--Mitchy was almost eager.

It had already sen