The eyes he turned on her seemed really to try if she jested or were serious. “So you arranged for me too?” She turned over again a few leaves of his book and, closing it with something of a clap, transferred it to the bench beside him--a movement in which, as if through a drop into thought, he rendered her no assistance. “What I mean is that I proposed it to Mr. Longdon, I suggested he should be asked. I’ve a reason for seeing him--I want to talk to him. And do you know,” the girl went on, “what Mr. Longdon said?” “Something splendid of course.” “He asked if you wouldn’t perhaps dislike his being here with you.” Vanderbank, throwing back his head, laughed, smoked, jogged his foot more than ever. “Awfully nice. Dear old Mitch! How little afraid of him you are!” Nanda wondered. “Of Mitch?” “Yes, of the tremendous pull he really has. It’s all very well to talk--he HAS it. But of course I don’t mean I don’t know”--and as with the effect of his nervous sociability he shifted his position. “I perfectly see that you’re NOT afraid. I perfectly know what you have in your head. I should never in the least dream of accusing you--as far as HE is concerned--of the least disposition to flirt; any more indeed,” Vanderbank pleasantly pursued, “than even of any general tendency of that sort. No, my dear Nanda”--he kindly kept it up--“I WILL say for you that, though a girl, thank heaven, and awfully MUCH a girl, you’re really not on the whole more of a flirt than a respectable social ideal prescribes.” “Thank you most tremendously,” his companion quietly replied. Something in the tone of it made him laugh out, and the particular sound went well with all the rest, with the August day and the charming spot and the young man’s lounging figure and Nanda’s own little hovering hospitality. “Of course I strike you as patronising you with unconscious sublimity. Well, that’s all right, for what’s the most natural thing to do in these conditions but the most luxurious? Won’t Mitchy be wonderful for feeling and enjoying them? I assure you I’m delighted he’s coming.” Then in a different tone a moment later, “Do you expect to be here long?” he asked. It took Nanda some time to say. “As long as Mr. Longdon will keep me, I suppose--if that doesn’t sound very horrible.” “Oh he’ll keep you! Only won’t he himself,” Vanderbank went on, “be coming up to town in the course of the autumn?” “Well, in that case I’d perfectly stay here without him.” “And leave him in London without YOU? Ah that’s not what we want: he wouldn’t be at all the same thing without you. Least of all for himself!” Vanderbank declared. Nanda again thought. “Yes, that’s what makes him funny, I suppose--his curious infatuation. I set him off--what do you call it?--show him off: by his going round and round me as the acrobat on the horse in the circus goes round the clown. He has said a great deal to me of your mother,” she irrelevantly added.