Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/303

BOOK SEVENTH: MITCHY Nothing is more charming than suddenly to come across something sharp and fresh after we've thought there was nothing more that could draw from us a groan. We've supposed we've had it all, have squeezed the last impression out of the last disappointment, penetrated to the last familiarity in the last surprise; then some fine day we find that we haven't done justice to life. There are little things that pop up and make us feel again. What may happen is after all incalculable. There's just a little chuck of the dice, and for three minutes we win. These, my dear young lady, are my three minutes. You wouldn't believe the amusement I get from them, and how can I possibly tell you? There's a faint, divine old fragrance here in the room—or doesn't it perhaps reach you? I sha'n't have lived without it, but I see now I had been afraid I should. You, on your side, won't have lived without some touch of greatness. This moment is great, and you've produced it. You were great when you felt all you could produce. Therefore," Mitchy went on, pausing once more, as he walked, before a picture, "I won't pull the whole thing down by the vulgarity of wishing that I too had a first-rate Cotman."

"Have you given up some very big thing to come?" Nanda inquired.

"What in the world is very big, my child, but the beauty of this hour? I haven't the least idea what, when I got Mr. Longdon's note, I gave up. Don't ask me for an account of anything; everything went—became imperceptible. I will say that for myself: I shed my badness, I do forget people, with a facility that makes me, for bits, for little patches, so far as they are concerned, cease to be; so that my life is spotted all over with momentary states in which I'm as the dead of whom nothing is said but good." He had strolled toward her again while she smiled at him. "I've died for this, Nanda."

"The only difficulty I see," she presently replied, "is 293