“My dear child, if you only could tell me! It would be, wouldn’t it?--it must have been--the subject of some fairy-tale, if fairy-tales were made now, or better still of some Christmas pantomime: ‘The Gnome and the Giant.’” Nanda appeared to try--not with much success--to see it. “Do you find Lord Petherton a Gnome?” Mitchy at first, for all reward, only glared at her. “Charming, Nanda--charming!” “A man’s giant enough for Lord Petherton,” she went on, “when his fortune’s gigantic. He preys upon you.” His hands in his pockets and his legs much apart, Mitchy sat there as in a posture adapted to her simplicity. “You’re adorable. YOU don’t. But it IS rather horrid, isn’t it?” he presently went on. Her momentary silence would have been by itself enough of an answer. “Nothing--of all you speak of,” she nevertheless returned, “will matter then. She’ll so simplify your life.” He remained just as he was, only with his eyes on her; and meanwhile she had turned again to her window, through which a faint sun-streak began to glimmer and play. At sight of it she opened the casement to let in the warm freshness. “The rain HAS stopped.” “You say you want me to save her. But what you really mean,” Mitchy resumed from the sofa, “isn’t at all exactly that.” Nanda, without heeding the remark, took in the sunshine. “It will be charming now in the garden.” Her friend got up, found his wonderful crossbarred cap, after a glance, on a neighbouring chair, and with it came toward her. “Your hope is that--as I’m good enough to be worth it--she’ll save ME.” Nanda looked at him now. “She will, Mitchy--she WILL!” They stood a moment in the recovered brightness; after which he mechanically--as with the pressure of quite another consciousness--put on his cap. “Well then, shall that hope between us be the thing--?” “The thing?”--she just wondered. “Why that will have drawn us together--to hold us so, you know--this afternoon. I mean the secret we spoke of.” She put out to him on this the hand he had taken a few minutes before, and he clasped it now only with the firmness it seemed to give and to ask for. “Oh it will do for that!” she said as they went out together. III