Nanda, with her eyes on him again, studied an instant this mystery. “Am I to infer with delight that it’s the sweet hope of meeting ME? It isn’t,” she continued in a moment, “as if there were any necessity for your saying that. What’s the use?” But all impatiently she stopped short. He was eminently gay even if his companion was not. “Because we’re such jolly old friends that we really needn’t so much as speak at all? Yes, thank goodness--thank goodness.” He had been looking round him, taking in the scene; he had dropped his hat on the ground and, completely at his ease, though still more wishing to show it, had crossed his legs and closely folded his arms. “What a tremendously jolly place! If I can’t for the life of me recall who they were--the other people--I’ve the comfort of being sure their minds are an equal blank. Do they even remember the place they had? ‘We had some fellows down at--where was it, the big white house last November?--and there was one of them, out of the What-do-you-call-it?--YOU know--who might have been a decent enough chap if he hadn’t presumed so on his gifts.’” Vanderbank paused a minute, but his companion said nothing, and he pursued. “It does show, doesn’t it?--the fact that we do meet this way--the tremendous change that has taken place in your life in the last three months. I mean, if I’m everywhere as you said just now, your being just the same.” “Yes--you see what you’ve done.” “How, what I’VE done?” “You plunge into the woods for change, for solitude,” the girl said, “and the first thing you do is to find me waylaying you in the depths of the forest. But I really couldn’t--if you’ll reflect upon it--know you were coming this way.” He sat there with his position unchanged but with a constant little shake in the foot that hung down, as if everything--and what she now put before him not least--was much too pleasant to be reflected on. “May I smoke a cigarette?” Nanda waited a little; her friend had taken out his silver case, which was of ample form, and as he extracted a cigarette she put forth her hand. “May _I_?” She turned the case over with admiration. Vanderbank demurred. “Do you smoke with Mr. Longdon?” “Immensely. But what has that to do with it?” “Everything, everything.” He spoke with a faint ring of impatience. “I want you to do with me exactly as you do with him.” “Ah that’s soon said!” the girl replied in a peculiar tone. “How do you mean, to ‘do’?” “Well then to BE. What shall I say?” Vanderbank pleasantly wondered while his foot kept up its motion. “To feel.” She continued to handle the cigarette-case, without, however, having profited by its contents. “I don’t think that as regards Mr. Longdon and me you know quite so much as you suppose.” Vanderbank laughed and smoked. “I take for granted he tells me everything.”