Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/186

THE AWKWARD AGE "Of course I do, and that's exactly why I said it. You see I'm not in the least delicate or graceful or shy about it—I just come out with it and defy you to contradict me. Who, if I'm not the best, is a better one?"

"Well," Nanda replied, "I feel since I've known Mr. Longdon that I've almost the sort of friend who makes nobody else count."

"Then, at the end of three months, he has arrived at a value for you that I haven't reached in all these years?"

"Yes," she returned—"the value of my not being afraid of him."

Vanderbank, on the bench, shifted his position, turning more to her, with an arm over the back. "And you're afraid of me?"

"Horribly—hideously."

"Then our long, happy relations—"

"They're just what make my terror," she broke in, "particularly abject. Happy relations don't matter. I always think of you with fear."

His elbow was on the back of the seat, and his hand supported his head. "How awfully curious—if it be true!"

She had been looking away to the sweet English distance, but at this she made a movement. "Oh, Mr. Van, I'm 'true'!"

As Mr. Van himself could not have expressed, at any subsequent time, to any interested friend, the particular effect upon him of the tone of these words, his chronicler takes advantage of the fact not to pretend to a greater intelligence—to limit himself, on the contrary, to the simple statement that they produced in Mr. Van's cheek a just discernible flush. "Fear of what?"

"I don't know. Fear is fear."

"Yes, yes—I see." He took out another cigarette and occupied a moment in lighting it. "Well, kindness is kindness too—that's all one can say." 176