“He won’t!” she replied with a sharpness before which her interlocutor retired. “He will!” she then added in quite another tone to Mitchy. “That is, you know, he perfectly MAY. But oh the subtlety of servants!” she sighed. Mitchy was now all there. “Mr. Longdon’s in town then?” “For the first time since you went away. He’s to call this afternoon.” “And you want to see him alone?” Mrs. Brook thought. “I don’t think I want to see him at all.” “Then your keeping him below--?” “Is so that he shan’t burst in till I know. It’s YOU, my dear, I want to see.” Mitchy glared about. “Well, don’t take it ill if, in return for that, I say I myself want to see every one. I could have done even just now with a little more of Edward.” Mrs. Brook, in her own manner and with a slow headshake, looked lovely. “_I_ couldn’t.” Then she puzzled it out with a pause. “It even does come over me that if you don’t mind--!” “What, my dear woman,” said Mitchy encouragingly, “did I EVER mind? I assure you,” he laughed, “I haven’t come back to begin!” At this, suddenly dropping everything else, she laid her hand on him. “Mitchy love, ARE you happy?” So for a moment they stood confronted. “Not perhaps as YOU would have tried to make me.” “Well, you’ve still GOT me, you know.” “Oh,” said Mitchy, “I’ve got a great deal. How, if I really look at it, can a man of my peculiar nature--it IS, you know, awfully peculiar--NOT be happy? Think, if one is driven to it for instance, of the breadth of my sympathies.” Mrs. Brook, as a result of thinking, appeared for a little to demur. “Yes--but one mustn’t be too much driven to it. It’s by one’s sympathies that one suffers. If you should do that I couldn’t bear it.” She clearly evoked for Mitchy a definite image. “It WOULD be funny, wouldn’t it? But you wouldn’t have to. I’d go off and do it alone somewhere--in a dark room, I think, or on a desert island; at any rate where nobody should see. Where’s the harm moreover,” he went on, “of any suffering that doesn’t bore one, as I’m sure, however much its outer aspect might amuse some others, mine wouldn’t bore me? What I should do in my desert island or my dark room, I feel, would be just to dance about with the thrill of it--which is exactly the exhibition of ludicrous gambols that I would fain have arranged to spare you. I assure you, dear Mrs. Brook,” he wound up, “that I’m not in the least bored now. Everything’s so interesting.” “You’re beautiful!” she vaguely interposed. But he pursued without heeding: “Was perhaps what you had in your head that _I_ should see him--?” She came back but slowly, however, to the moment. “Mr. Longdon? Well, yes. You know he can’t bear ME--” “Yes, yes”--Mitchy was almost eager. It had already sent her off again. “You’re too lovely. You HAVE come back the same. It seemed to me,” she after an instant explained, “that I wanted him to be seen--”