Mitchy had a short silence that might have represented a change of colour. “It isn’t good enough?” But he instantly took himself up. “Of course he wants--as I do--to treat you with tact!” “Oh it’s all right,” Vanderbank immediately said. “Your ‘tact’--yours and his--is marvellous, and Nanda’s greatest of all.” Mitchy’s momentary renewal of stillness was addressed, he somehow managed not obscurely to convey, to the last clause of his friend’s speech. “If you’re not sure,” he presently resumed, “why can’t you frankly ask him?” Vanderbank again, as the phrase is, “mooned” about a little. “Because I don’t know that it would do.” “What do you mean by ‘do’?” “Well, that it would be exactly--what do you call it?--‘square.’ Or even quite delicate or decent. To take from him, in the way of an assurance so handsomely offered, so much, and then to ask for more: I don’t feel I can do it. Besides, I’ve my little conviction. To the question itself he might easily reply that it’s none of my business.” “I see,” Mitchy dropped. “Such pressure might suggest to him moreover that you’re hesitating more than you perhaps really are.” “Oh as to THAT” said Vanderbank, “I think he practically knows how much.” “And how little?” He met this, however, with no more form than if it had been a poor joke, so that Mitchy also smoked for a moment in silence. “It’s your coming down here, you mean, for these three or four days, that will have fixed it?” The question this time was one to which the speaker might have expected an answer, but Vanderbank’s only immediate answer was to walk and walk. “I want so awfully to be kind to her,” he at last said. “I should think so!” Then with irrelevance Mitchy harked back. “Shall _I_ find out?” But Vanderbank, with another thought, had lost the thread. “Find out what?” “Why if she does get anything--!” “If I’m not kind ENOUGH?”--Van had caught up again. “Dear no; I’d rather you shouldn’t speak unless first spoken to.” “Well, HE may speak--since he knows we know.” “It isn’t likely, for he can’t make out why I told you.” “You didn’t tell ME, you know,” said Mitchy. “You told Mrs. Brook.” “Well, SHE told you, and her talking about it is the unpleasant idea. He can’t get her down anyhow.” “Poor Mrs. Brook!” Mitchy meditated. “Poor Mrs. Brook!” his companion echoed. “But I thought you said,” he went on, “that he doesn’t mind.” “YOUR knowing? Well, I dare say he doesn’t. But he doesn’t want a lot of gossip and chatter.” “Oh!” said Mitchy with meekness. “I may absolutely take it from you then,” Vanderbank presently resumed, “that Nanda has her idea?” “Oh she didn’t tell me so. But it’s none the less my belief.” “Well,” Vanderbank at last threw off, “I feel it for myself. If only because she always knows everything,” he pursued without looking at Mitchy. “She always knows everything, everything.” “Everything, everything.” Mitchy got up. “She told me so herself yesterday,” said Van. “And she told ME so to-day.”