ou and I there's one comfort at least they may treat
themselves to. I mean of course," Van developed, "that of being easy and
frank and natural. There are such a lot of relations in which one isn't,
in which it doesn't pay, in which 'ease' in fact would be the greatest
of troubles and 'nature' the greatest of falsities. However," he
continued while he suddenly got up to change the place in which he had
put his hat, "I don't really know why I'm preaching at such a rate, for
I've a perfect consciousness of not myself requiring it. One does half
the time preach more or less for one's self, eh? I'm not mistaken at all
events, I think, about the right thing with YOU. And a hint's enough
for you, I'm sure, on the right thing with me." He had been looking all
round while he talked and had twice shifted his seat; so that it was
quite in consonance with his general admiring notice that the next
impression he broke out with should have achieved some air of relevance.
"What extraordinarily lovely flowers you have and how charming you've
made everything! You're always doing something--women are always
changing the position of their furniture. If one happens to come in in
the dark, no matter how well one knows the place, one sits down on a
hat or a puppy-dog. But of course you'll say one doesn't come in in the
dark, or at least, if one does, deserves what one gets. Only you know
the way some women keep their rooms. I'm bound to say YOU don't, do
you?--you don't go in for flower-pots in the windows and half a dozen
blinds. Why SHOULD you? You HAVE got a lot to show!" He rose with this
for the third time, as the better to command the scene. "What I mean is
that sofa--which by the way is awfully good: you do, my dear Nanda, go
it! It certainly was HERE the last time, wasn't it? and this thing was
there. The last time--I mean the last time I was up here--was fearfully
long ago: when, by the way, WAS it? But you see I HAVE been and that
I remember it. And you've a lot more things now. You're laying up
treasure. Really the increase of luxury--! What an awfully jolly lot
of books--have you read them all? Where did you learn so much about
bindings?"

He continued to talk; he took things up and put them down; Nanda sat in
her place, where her stillness, fixed and colourless, contrasted with
his rather flushed freedom, and appeared only to wait, half in surprise,
half in surrender, for the flow of his suggestiveness to run its course,
so that