urhood in
general into the confidence of his surprise. "To neglect ME?"

"Well, others too, I believe--with whom we're not concerned. He has been
so taken up. But you above all."

Mr. Longdon showed on this a coldness that somehow spoke for itself as
the greatest with which he had ever in his life met an act of reparation
and that was infinitely confirmed by his sustained immobility. "But of
what have I complained?"

"Oh I don't think he fancies you've complained."

"And how could he have come to see me," he continued, "when for so many
months past I've been so little in town?"

He was not more ready with objections, however, than his companion had
by this time become with answers. "He must have been thinking of the
time of your present stay. He evidently has you much on his mind--he
spoke of not having seen you."

"He has quite sufficiently tried--he has left cards," Mr. Longdon
returned. "What more does he want?"

Nanda looked at him with her long grave straight-ness, which had often a
play of light beyond any smile. "Oh, you know, he does want more."

"Then it was open to him--"

"So he so strongly feels"--she quickly took him up--"that you must have
felt. And therefore it is I speak for him."

"Don't!" said Mr. Longdon.

"But I promised him I would."

"Don't!" her friend repeated as in stifled pain.

She had kept for the time all her fine clearness turned to him; but
she might on this have been taken as giving him up with a movement of
obedience and a strange soft sigh. The smothered sound might even have
represented to a listener at all initiated a consenting retreat before
an effort greater than her reckoning--a retreat that was in so far the
snap of a sharp tension. The next minute, none the less, she evidently
found a fresh provocation in the sight of the pale and positively
excessive rigour she had imposed, so that, though her friend was only
accommodating himself to her wish she had a sudden impulse of criticism.
"You're proud about it--too proud!"

"Well, what if I am?" He looked at her with a complexity of
communication that no words could have meddled with. "Pride's all right
when it helps one to bear things."

"Ah," said Nanda, "but that's only when one wants to take the least from
them. When one wants to take the most--!"

"Well?"--he spoke, as she faltered, with a certain small hardness of
interest.

She faltered, however, indeed. "Oh I don't know how to say it." She
fairly coloure