Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/149

BOOK FOURTH: MR. CASHMORE ready." After which, as her visitor seemed not only too reduced to doubt it, but too baffled to distinguish audibly, for his credit, between resignation and admiration, she produced: "Because she's purely instinctive. Her instincts are splendid—but it's terrific."

"That's all I ever maintained it to be!" Mr. Cashmore cried. "It is terrific."

"Well," his friend answered, "I'm watching her. We're all watching her. It's like some great natural poetic thing—an Alpine sunrise or a big high tide."

"You're amazing!" Mr. Cashmore laughed. "I'm watching her too."

"And I'm also watching you," Mrs. Brook lucidly continued. "What I don't for a moment believe is that her bills are paid by any one. It's much more probable," she sagaciously observed, "that they're not paid at all."

"Oh, well, if she can get on that way—!"

"There can't be a place in London," Mrs. Brook pursued, "where they're not delighted to dress such a woman. She shows things, don't you see? as some great massive wall shows placards and posters. And what proof can you adduce?" she asked.

Mr. Cashmore had grown restless; he picked a stray thread off the knee of his trousers. "Ah, when you talk about 'adducing'—!" He appeared to intimate, as if with the hint that if she didn't take care she might bore him, that it was the kind of word he used only in the House of Commons.

"When I talk about it you can't meet me," she placidly returned. But she fixed him with her weary penetration. "You try to believe what you can't believe, in order to give yourself excuses. And she does the same—only less, for she recognizes less, in general, the need of them. She's so grand and simple."

Poor Mr. Cashmore stared. "Grander and simpler than I, you mean?" 139