Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/342

THE AWKWARD AGE beauty of you is that you're too good; which, for me, is but another way of saying you're too clever. You make no demands. You let things go. You don't allow, in particular, for the human weakness that enjoys an occasional glimpse of the weakness of others."

She had deeply attended to him. "You mean perhaps one doesn't show enough what one wants?"

"I think that must be it. You're so fiendishly proud."

She appeared again to wonder. "Not too much so, at any rate, only to want from you—"

"Well, what?"

"Why, what's pleasant for yourself," she simply said.

"Oh dear, that's poor bliss!" he declared. "How does it come then," he next said, "that, with this barrenness of our intercourse, I know so well your hand?"

A series of announcements had meanwhile been made, with guests arriving to match them, and Nanda's eyes, at this moment, engaged themselves with Mr. Longdon and her mother, who entered the room together. When she looked back to her companion, she had had time to drop a consciousness of his question. "If I'm proud, to you, I'm not good," she said, "and if I'm good—always to you—I'm not proud. I know at all events, perfectly, how immensely you're occupied, what a quantity of work you get through and how every minute, for you, counts. Don't make it a crime to me that I'm reasonable."

"No, that would show, wouldn't it? that there isn't much else. But how it all comes back—!"

"Well, to what?" she asked.

"To the old story. You know how I'm occupied. You know how I work. You know how I manage my time."

"Oh, I see," said Nanda. "It is my knowing, after all, everything."

"Everything. The book I just mentioned is one 332