She had spoken as with conscious promptitude, making up for what she had not yet succeeded in saying by a quick, complete statement of her case. She was evidently also going on with more, but her actual visitor had already taken her up with a laugh. “You ARE making a day of it and you run us like railway-trains!” He looked at his watch. “Have _I_ then time?” “It seems to me I should say ‘Have _I_?’ But it’s not half-past four,” Nanda went on, “and though I’ve something very particular of course to say to you it won’t take long. They don’t bring tea till five, and you must surely stay till that. I had already written to you when they each, for the same reason, proposed this afternoon. They go out of town to-morrow for Sunday.” “Oh I see--and they have to see you first. What an influence you exert, you know, on people’s behaviour!” She continued as literal as her friend was facetious. “Well, it just happened so, and it didn’t matter, since, on my asking you, don’t you know? to choose your time, you had taken, as suiting you best, this comparatively early hour.” “Oh perfectly.” But he again had his watch out. “I’ve a job, perversely--that was my reason--on the other side of the world; which, by the way, I’m afraid, won’t permit me to wait for tea. My tea doesn’t matter.” The watch went back to his pocket. “I’m sorry to say I must be off before five. It has been delightful at all events to see you again.” He was on his feet as he spoke, and though he had been half the time on his feet his last words gave the effect of his moving almost immediately to the door. It appeared to come out with them rather clearer than before that he was embarrassed enough really to need help, and it was doubtless the measure she after an instant took of this that enabled Nanda, with a quietness all her own, to draw to herself a little more of the situation. The quietness was plainly determined for her by a quick vision of its being the best assistance she could show. Had he an inward terror that explained his superficial nervousness, the incoherence of a loquacity designed, it would seem, to check in each direction her advance? He only fed it in that case by allowing his precautionary benevolence to put him in so much deeper. Where indeed could he have supposed she wanted to come out, and what that she could ever do for him would really be so beautiful as this present chance to smooth his confusion and add as much as possible to that refined satisfaction with himself which would proceed from his having dealt with a difficult hour in a gallant and delicate way? To force upon him an awkwardness was like forcing a disfigurement or a hurt, so that at the end of a minute, during which the expression of her face became a kind of uplifted view of her opportunity, she arrived at the appearance of having changed places with him and of their being together precisely in order that he--not she--should be let down easily. II