Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/195

BOOK FIFTH: THE DUCHESS He went back, after a moment, to her question. "He's not, at any rate, like his mother."

Nanda turned it over. "Perhaps you wouldn't think so much of her now."

"Perhaps not. At all events my parting you from Mr. Vanderbank was my own idea."

"I wasn't thinking," Nanda said, "of your parting me. I was thinking of your parting yourself."

"I might have sent you to the house? Well," Mr. Longdon replied, "I find I take more and more the economical view of my pleasures. I run them less and less together—I get all I can out of each."

"So now you're getting all you can out of me?"

"All I can, my dear—all I can." He watched a little the flushed distance, then mildly broke out: "It is, as you said just now, exciting! But it makes me"—and he became abrupt again—"want you, as I've already told you, to come to my place. Not, however, that we may be still more mad together."

The girl, from the bench, shared his contemplation. "Do you call this madness?"

He hesitated. "You spoke of it yourself as excitement. You'll make, of course, one of your fine distinctions, but I take it, in my rough way, as a whirl. We're going round and round." In a minute he had folded his arms with the same closeness Vanderbank had used—in a minute he too was nervously shaking his foot. "Steady, steady; if we sit close we shall see it through. But come down to Suffolk for sanity."

"You do mean then that I may come alone?"

"I won't receive you, I assure you, on any other terms. I want to show you," he continued, "what life can give. Not, of course," he subjoined, "of this sort of thing."

"No—you've told me. Of peace."

"Of peace," said Mr. Longdon. "Oh, you don't 185