“You put it, I think, correctly. Of course I’ve not seen so much of Nanda--if between my age and hers, that is, any real contact is possible--without knowing that she now regards you as one of the very best of her friends, treating you, I find myself suspecting, with a degree of confidence--” Mitchy gave a laugh of interruption. “That she doesn’t show even to you?” Mr. Longdon’s poised glasses faced him. “Even! I don’t mind, as the opportunity has come up, telling you frankly--and as from my time of life to your own--all the comfort I take in the sense that in any case of need or trouble she might look to you for whatever advice or support the crisis should demand.” “She has told you she feels I’d be there?” Mitchy after an instant asked. “I’m not sure,” his friend replied, “that I ought quite to mention anything she has ‘told’ me. I speak of what I’ve made out myself.” “Then I thank you more than I can say for your penetration. Her mother, I should let you know,” Mitchy continued, “is with her just now.” Mr. Longdon took off his glasses with a jerk. “Has anything happened to her?” “To account for the fact I refer to?” Mitchy said in amusement at his start. “She’s not ill, that I know of, thank goodness, and she hasn’t broken her leg. But something, none the less, has happened to her--that I think I may say. To tell you all in a word, it’s the reason, such as it is, of my being here to meet you. Mrs. Brook asked me to wait. She’ll see you herself some other time.” Mr. Longdon wondered. “And Nanda too?” “Oh that must be between yourselves. Only, while I keep you here--” “She understands my delay?” Mitchy thought. “Mrs. Brook must have explained.” Then as his companion took this in silence, “But you don’t like it?” he asked. “It only comes to me that Mrs. Brook’s explanations--!” “Are often so odd? Oh yes; but Nanda, you know, allows for that oddity. And Mrs. Brook, by the same token,” Mitchy developed, “knows herself--no one better--what may frequently be thought of it. That’s precisely the reason of her desire that you should have on this occasion explanations from a source that she’s so good as to pronounce, for the immediate purpose, superior. As for Nanda,” he wound up, “to be aware that we’re here together won’t strike her as so bad a sign.” “No,” Mr. Longdon attentively assented; “she’ll hardly fear we’re plotting her ruin. But what then has happened to her?” “Well,” said Mitchy, “it’s you, I think, who will have to give it a name. I know you know what I’ve known.” Mr. Longdon, his nippers again in place, hesitated. “Yes, I know.” “And you’ve accepted it.” “How could I help it? To reckon with such cleverness--!” “Was beyond you? Ah it wasn’t my cleverness,” Mitchy said. “There’s a greater than mine. There’s a greater even than Van’s. That’s the whole point,” he went on while his friend looked at him hard. “You don’t even like it just a little?” Mr. Longdon wondered. “The existence of such an element--?”