to the violation of their homes?” Nanda wondered; she cultivated the sense of his making her intensely reflect, “But haven’t people in England always let their places?” “If we’re a nation of shopkeepers, you mean, it can’t date, on the scale on which we show it, only from last week? No doubt, no doubt, and the more one thinks of it the more one seems to see that society--for we’re IN society, aren’t we, and that’s our horizon?--can never have been anything but increasingly vulgar. The point is that in the twilight of time--and I belong, you see, to the twilight--it had made out much less how vulgar it COULD be. It did its best very probably, but there were too many superstitions it had to get rid of. It has been throwing them overboard one by one, so that now the ship sails uncommonly light. That’s the way”--and with his eyes on the golden distance he ingeniously followed it out--“I come to feel so the lurching and pitching. If I weren’t a pretty fair sailor--well, as it is, my dear,” he interrupted himself with a laugh, “I show you often enough what grabs I make for support.” He gave a faint gasp, half amusement, half anguish, then abruptly relieved himself by a question. “To whom in point of fact does the place belong?” “I’m awfully ashamed, but I’m afraid I don’t know. That just came up here,” the girl went on, “for Mr. Van.” Mr. Longdon seemed to think an instant. “Oh it came up, did it? And Mr. Van couldn’t tell?” “He has quite forgotten--though he has been here before. Of course it may have been with other people,” she added in extenuation. “I mean it mayn’t have been theirs then any more than it’s Mitchy’s.” “I see. They too had just bundled in.” Nanda completed the simple history. “To-day it’s Mitchy who bundles, and I believe that really he bundled only yesterday. He turned in his people and here we are.” “Here we are, here we are!” her friend more gravely echoed. “Well, it’s splendid!” As if at a note in his voice her eyes, while his own still strayed away, just fixed him. “Don’t you think it’s really rather exciting? Everything’s ready, the feast all spread, and with nothing to blunt our curiosity but the general knowledge that there will be people and things--with nothing but that we comfortably take our places.” He answered nothing, though her picture apparently reached him. “There ARE people, there ARE things, and all in a plenty. Had every one, when you came away, turned up?” she asked as he was still silent. “I dare say. There were some ladies and gentlemen on the terrace whom I didn’t know. But I looked only for you and came this way on an indication of your mother’s.” “And did she ask that if you should find me with Mr. Van you’d make him come to her?” Mr. Longdon replied to this with some delay and without movement. “How could she have supposed he was here?” “Since he had not yet been to the house? Oh it has always been a wonder to me, the things that mamma supposes! I see she asked you,” Nanda insisted.