Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/201

BOOK FIFTH: THE DUCHESS She gave after an instant a faint, feeble smile which seemed to speak of helplessness and which, when at rare moments it played in her face, was expressive from her positive lack of personal, superficial diffidence. "Well—I don't know." It was as if appearances became at times so complicated that—so far as helping others to understand was concerned—she could only give up.

"I hope you don't think I want you to be with me as you wouldn't be—as it were—with yourself. I hope you don't think I don't want you to be frank. If you were to try to appear to me anything—" He ended in simple sadness; that, for instance, would be so little what he should like.

"Anything different, you mean, from what I am? That's just what I've thought from the first. One's just what one is—isn't one? I don't mean so much," she went on, "in one's character or temper—for they have, haven't they? to be what's called 'properly controlled'—as in one's mind and what one sees and feels and the sort of thing one notices." Nanda paused an instant; then "There you are!" she simply but rather desperately brought out.

Mr. Longdon considered this with visible intensity. "What you suggest is that the things you speak of depend upon other people?"

"Well, every one isn't so beautiful as you." Nanda had met him with promptitude, yet no sooner had she spoken than she appeared again to encounter a difficulty. "But there it is—my just saying even that. Oh, how I always know—as I've told you before—whenever I'm different! I can't ask you to tell me the things Granny would have said, because that's simply arranging to keep myself back from you, and so being nasty and underhand, which you naturally don't want, nor I either. Nevertheless when I say the things she wouldn't, then I put before you too much—too much for your liking it— 191