“Without inconvenience, as it were, either to himself or to you? Then,” said Mitchy, who visibly felt that he had taken her up successfully, “it strikes me that I’m absolutely your man. It’s delicious to come back to a use.” But she was much more dim about it. “Oh what you’ve come back to--!” “It’s just what I’m trying to get at. Van is still then where I left him?” She was just silent. “Did you really believe he would move?” Mitchy took a few turns, speaking almost with his back presented. “Well, with all the reasons--!” After which, while she watched him, he was before her again with a question. “It’s utterly off?” “When was it ever really on?” “Oh I know your view, and that, I think,” said Mitchy, “is the most extraordinary part of it. I can tell you it would have put ME on.” “My view?” Mrs. Brook thought. “Have you forgotten that I had for you too a view that didn’t?” “Ah but we didn’t differ, you and I. It wasn’t a defiance and a prophecy. You wanted ME.” “I did indeed!” Mrs. Brook said simply. “And you didn’t want him. For HER, I mean. So you risked showing it.” She looked surprised. “DID I?” Again they were face to face. “Your candour’s divine!” She wondered. “Do you mean it was even then?” Mitchy smiled at her till he was red. “It’s exquisite now.” “Well,” she presently returned, “I knew my Van!” “_I_ thought I knew ‘yours’ too,” Mitchy said. Their eyes met a minute and he added: “But I didn’t.” Then he exclaimed: “How you’ve worked it!” She looked barely conscious. “‘Worked it’?” After which, with a slightly sharper note: “How do you know--while you’ve been amusing yourself in places that I’d give my head to see again but never shall--what I’ve been doing?” “Well, I saw, you know, that night at Tishy’s, just before we left England, your wonderful start. I got a look at your attitude, as it were, and your system.” Her eyes were now far away, and she spoke after an instant without moving them. “And didn’t I by the same token get a look at yours?” “Mine?” Mitchy thought, but seemed to doubt. “My dear child, I hadn’t any then.” “You mean that it has formed itself--your system--since?” He shook his head with decision. “I assure you I’m quite at sea. I’ve never had, and I have as little as ever now, anything but my general philosophy, which I won’t attempt at present to go into and of which moreover I think you’ve had first and last your glimpses. What I made out in you that night was a perfect policy.” Mrs. Brook had another of her infantine stares. “Every one that night seems to have made out something! All I can say is at any rate,” she went on, “that in that case you were all far deeper than I was.” “It was just a blind instinct, without a programme or a scheme? Perhaps then, since it has so perfectly succeeded, the name doesn’t matter. I’m lost, as I tell you,” Mitchy declared, “in admiration of its success.” She looked, as before, so young, yet so grave. “What do you call its success?”