Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/271

BOOK SIXTH: MRS. BROOK so often reminded me. I do understand. If I were to go in for Aggie it would only be to oblige. The modern girl, the product of our hard London facts, and of her inevitable consciousness of them, just as they are—she, wonderful being, is, I fully recognize, my real affair, and I'm not ashamed to say that when I like the individual I'm not afraid of the type. She knows too much—I don't say; but she doesn't know, after all, a millionth part of what I do."

"I'm not sure!" Mrs. Brook earnestly exclaimed.

He had rung out, and he kept it up, with a limpidity unusual. "And product for product, when you come to that, I'm a queerer one myself than any other. The traditions I smash!" Mitchy laughed.

Mrs. Brook had got up and Vanderbank had gone again to the window. "That's exactly why," she returned: "you're a pair of monsters and your monstrosity fits. She does know too much," she added.

"Well," said Mitchy, with resolution, "it's all my fault."

"Not all—unless," Mrs. Brook returned, "that's only a sweet way of saying that it's mostly mine."

"Oh, yours too—immensely; in fact every one's. Even Edward's, I dare say; and certainly, unmistakably, Harold's. Ah, and Van's own—rather!" Mitchy continued; "for all he turns his back and will have nothing to say to it."

It was on the back Vanderbank turned that Mrs. Brook's eyes now rested. "That's precisely why he shouldn't be afraid of her."

He faced straight about. "Oh, I don't deny my part."

He shone at them brightly enough, and Mrs. Brook, thoughtful, wistful, candid, took in for a moment the radiance. "And yet to think that after all it has been mere talk!"

Something in her tone again made her hearers laugh out; so it was still with the air of good-humor that 261