d with the attempt. "One must let the sense of all that I
speak of--well, all come. One must rather like it. I don't know--but I
suppose one must rather grovel."

Mr. Longdon, though with visible reluctance, turned it over. "That's
very fine--but you're a woman."

"Yes--that must make a difference. But being a woman, in such a case,
has then," Nanda went on, "its advantages."

On this point perhaps her friend might presently have been taken as
relaxing. "It strikes me that even at that the advantages are mainly for
others. I'm glad, God knows, that you're not also a young man."

"Then we're suited all round."

She had spoken with a promptitude that appeared again to act on him
slightly as an irritant, for he met it--with more delay--by a long and
derisive murmur. "Oh MY pride--!" But this she in no manner took up;
so that he was left for a little to his thoughts. "That's what you were
plotting when you told me the other day that you wanted time?"

"Ah I wasn't plotting--though I was, I confess, trying to work things
out. That particular idea of simply asking Mr. Van by letter to present
himself--that particular flight of fancy hadn't in fact then at all
occurred to me."

"It never occurred, I'm bound to say, to ME," said Mr. Longdon. "I've
never thought of writing to him."

"Very good. But you haven't the reasons. I wanted to attack him."

"Not about me, I hope to God!" Mr. Longdon, distinctly a little paler,
rejoined.

"Don't be afraid. I think I had an instinct of how you would have taken
THAT. It was about mother."

"Oh!" said her visitor.

"He has been worse to her than to you," she continued. "But he'll make
it all right."

Mr. Longdon's attention retained its grimness. "If he has such a remedy
for the more then, what has he for the less?"

Nanda, however, was but for an instant checked.

"Oh it's I who make it up to YOU. To mother, you see, there's no one
otherwise to make it up."

This at first unmistakeably sounded to him too complicated for
acceptance. But his face changed as light dawned. "That puts it then
that you WILL come?"

"I'll come if you'll take me as I am--which is what I must previously
explain to you: I mean more than I've ever done before. But what HE
means by what you call his remedy is my making you feel better about
himself."

The old man gazed at her. "'Your' doing it is too beautiful! And he
could really come to you for the purpose of asking you?"

"Oh no," said the