Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/266

THE AWKWARD AGE "Oh, I'm not playing!" Mrs. Brook declared with a little rattle of emotion.

"She's not playing"—Mr. Mitchett gravely confirmed it. "Don't you feel in the very air the vibration of the passion that she's simply too charming to shake at the window as the house-maid shakes the table-cloth or the jingo the flag?" Then he took up what Vanderbank had previously said. "Of course, my dear man, I'm 'aware,' as you just now put it, of everything, and I'm not indiscreet, am I, Mrs. Brook? in admitting for you, as well as for myself, that there was an impossibility that you and I used sometimes to turn over together. Only—Lord bless us all!—it isn't as if I hadn't long ago seen that there's nothing at all for me."

"Ah, wait, wait!" Mrs. Brook put in.

"She has a theory"—Vanderbank, from his chair, lighted it up for Mitchy, who hovered before them—"that your chance will come, later on, after I've given my measure."

"Oh, but that's exactly," Mitchy was quick to respond, "what you'll never do! You'll walk in magnificent mystery 'later on' not a bit less than you do to-day; you'll continue to have the benefit of everything that our imagination, perpetually engaged, often baffled and never fatigued, will continue to bedeck you with. Nanda, in the same way, to the end of all her time, will simply remain exquisite, or genuine, or generous—whatever we choose to call it. It may make a difference to us, who are comparatively vulgar, but what difference will it make to her whether you do or you don't decide for her? You can't belong to her more, for herself, than you do already—and that's precisely so much that there's no room for any one else. Where, therefore, without that room, do I come in?"

"Nowhere, I see"—Vanderbank seemed obligingly to muse. 256