Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/321

BOOK SEVENTH: MITCHY "But alternative to what?"

"Why, to being your wife, damn you!" Mitchy, on these words turned away again, and his companion, in the presence of his renewed dim gyrations, sat for a minute dumb. Before Van had spoken indeed he was back again. "Excuse my violence, but of course you really see."

"I'm not pretending anything," Vanderbank said—"but a man must understand. What I catch hold of is that you offer me—in the fact that you're thus at any rate disposed of—a proof that I, at any rate, sha'n't, if I hesitate to 'go in,' have a pretext for saying to myself that I may deprive her—"

"Yes, precisely," Mitchy now urbanely assented: "of something, in the shape of a man with my amount of money, that she may live to regret and to languish for. My amount of money, don't you see," he very simply added, "is nothing to her."

"And you want me to be sure that—so far as I may ever have had a scruple—she has had her chance and got rid of it."

"Completely," Mitchy smiled.

"Because"—Vanderbank, with the aid of his cigarette, thoughtfully pieced it out—"that may possibly bring me to the point."

"Possibly!" Mitchy laughed.

He had stood a moment longer, almost as if to see the possibility develop before his eyes, and had even started at the next sound of his friend's voice. What Vanderbank in fact brought out, however, only made him turn his back. "Do you like so very much little Aggie?"

"Well," said Mitchy, "Nanda does. And I like Nanda."

"You're too amazing," Vanderbank mused. His musing had presently the effect of making him rise; reflection indeed possessed him after he was on his feet. "I 311