Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/311

BOOK SEVENTH: MITCHY it's the one sort of thing you don't know. You can't imagine," she said as she returned to him, "the effect it will produce on you. You must get really near it and see it all come out to feel all its beauty. You'll like it, Mitchy"—and Nanda's gravity was wonderful—"better than anything you have known."

The clear sincerity of this, even had there been nothing else, imposed a consideration that Mitchy now flagrantly could give, and the deference of his suggestion of difficulty only grew more deep. "I'm to do then, with this happy condition of hers, what you say you've done—to try it?" And then as her assent, so directly challenged, failed an instant: "But won't my approach to it, however cautious, be just what will break it up and spoil it."

Nanda thought. "Why so—if mine wasn't?"

"Oh, you're not me!"

"But I'm just as bad."

"Thank you, my dear!" Mitchy rang out.

"Without," Nanda pursued, "being as good." She had, on this, in a different key, her own sudden explosion. "Don't you see, Mitchy dear—for the very heart of it all—how good I believe you?"

She had spoken as with a flare of impatience at some justice he failed to do her, and this brought him, after a startled instant, close enough to her to take up her hand. She let him have it, and, in mute, solemn reassurance, he raised it to his lips, saying to her thus more things than he could say in any other way; which yet, just after, when he had released it and a motionless pause had ensued, didn't prevent him from adding three words. "Oh, Nanda, Nanda!"

The tone of them made her again extraordinarily gentle. "Don't 'try' anything then. Take everything for granted."

He had turned away from her and walked 301