“Ah then not with the Duchess herself.” “With Nanda--whose plan from the first, you won’t have forgotten, the thing has so charmingly been.” Vanderbank could show that his not having in the least forgotten was yet not a bar to his being now mystified. “But, my dear man, what can Nanda ‘settle’?” “My fate,” Mitchy said, pausing well before him. Vanderbank sat now a minute with raised eyes, catching the indistinctness of the other’s strange expression. “You’re both beyond me!” he exclaimed at last. “I don’t see what you in particular gain.” “I didn’t either till she made it all out to me. One sees then, in such a matter, for one’s self. And as everything’s gain that isn’t loss, there was nothing I COULD lose. It gets me,” Mitchy further explained, “out of the way.” “Out of the way of what?” This, Mitchy frankly showed, was more difficult to say, but he in time brought it out. “Well, of appearing to suggest to you that my existence, in a prolonged state of singleness, may ever represent for her any real alternative.” “But alternative to what?” “Why to being YOUR wife, damn you!” Mitchy, on these words turned away again, and his companion, in the presence of his renewed dim gyrations, sat for a minute dumb. Before Van had spoken indeed he was back again. “Excuse my violence, but of course you really see.” “I’m not pretending anything,” Vanderbank said--“but a man MUST understand. What I catch hold of is that you offer me--in the fact that you’re thus at any rate disposed of--a proof that I, by the same token, shan’t, if I hesitate to ‘go in,’ have a pretext for saying to myself that I MAY deprive her--!” “Yes, precisely,” Mitchy now urbanely assented: “of something--in the shape of a man with MY amount of money--that she may live to regret and to languish for. My amount of money, don’t you see?” he very simply added, “is nothing to her.” “And you want me to be sure that--so far as I may ever have had a scruple--she has had her chance and got rid of it.” “Completely,” Mitchy smiled. “Because”--Vanderbank with the aid of his cigar thoughtfully pieced it out--“that may possibly bring me to the point.” “Possibly!” Mitchy laughed. He had stood a moment longer, almost as if to see the possibility develop before his eyes, and had even started at the next sound of his friend’s voice. What Vanderbank in fact brought out, however, only made him turn his back. “Do you like so very much little Aggie?” “Well,” said Mitchy, “Nanda does. And I like Nanda.” “You’re too amazing,” Vanderbank mused. His musing had presently the effect of making him rise; meditation indeed beset him after he was on his feet. “I can’t help its coming over me then that on such an extraordinary system you must also rather like ME.” “What will you have, my dear Van?” Mitchy frankly asked. “It’s the sort of thing you must be most used to. For at the present moment--look!--aren’t we all at you at once?”