ral
philosophy, which I won't attempt at present to go into and of which
moreover I think you've had first and last your glimpses. What I made
out in you that night was a perfect policy."

Mrs. Brook had another of her infantine stares. "Every one that night
seems to have made out something! All I can say is at any rate," she
went on, "that in that case you were all far deeper than I was."

"It was just a blind instinct, without a programme or a scheme? Perhaps
then, since it has so perfectly succeeded, the name doesn't matter. I'm
lost, as I tell you," Mitchy declared, "in admiration of its success."

She looked, as before, so young, yet so grave. "What do you call its
success?"

"Let me ask you rather--mayn't I?--what YOU call its failure."

Mrs. Brook, who had been standing for some minutes, seated herself at
this as if to respond to his idea. But the next moment she had fallen
back into thought. "Have you often heard from him?"

"Never once."

"And have you written?"

"Not a word either. I left it, you see," Mitchy smiled, "all, to YOU."
After which he continued: "Has he been with you much?"

She just hesitated. "As little as possible. But as it happens he was
here just now."

Her visitor fairly flushed. "And I've only missed him?"

Her pause again was of the briefest. "You wouldn't if he HAD gone up."

"'Gone up'?"

"To Nanda, who has now her own sitting-room, as you know; for whom he
immediately asked and for whose benefit, whatever you may think, I was
at the end of a quarter of an hour, I assure you, perfectly ready to
release him. He changed his mind, however, and went away without seeing
her."

Mitchy showed the deepest interest. "And what made him change his mind?"

"Well, I'm thinking it out."

He appeared to watch this labour. "But with no light yet?"

"When it comes I'll tell you."

He hung fire once more but an instant. "You didn't yourself work the
thing again?"

She rose at this in strange sincerity. "I think, you know, you go very
far."

"Why, didn't we just now settle," he promptly replied, "that it's all
instinctive and unconscious? If it was so that night at Tishy's--!"

"Ah, voyons, voyons," she broke in, "what did I do even then?"
He laughed out at something in her tone. "You'd like it again all
pictured--?"

"I'm not afraid."

"Why, you just simply--publicly--took her back."

"And where was the monstrosity of that?"

"In the one little right place. In your remova