Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/399

BOOK NINTH: VANDERBANK to spare you. I assure you, dear Mrs. Brook," he wound up, "that I'm not in the least bored now. Everything is so interesting."

"You're beautiful!" she vaguely interposed.

But he pursued without heeding: "Was it perhaps what you had in your head that I should see him—?"

She came back but slowly, however, to the moment. "Mr. Longdon? Well, yes. You know he can't bear me—"

"Yes, yes"—Mitchy was almost eager.

It had already sent her off again. "You're too lovely. You have come back the same. It seemed to me," she after an instant explained, "that I wanted him to be seen—"

"Without inconvenience, as it were, either to himself or to you? Then," said Mitchy, who visibly felt that he had taken her up successfully, "it strikes me that I'm absolutely your man. It's delicious to come back to a use."

But she was much more dim about it. "Oh, what you've come back to!"

"It's just what I'm trying to get at. Van is still then where I left him?"

She was just silent. "Did you really believe he would move?"

Mitchy took a few turns, speaking almost with his back presented. "Well, with all the reasons—!" After which, while she watched him, he was before her again with a question. "Is it utterly off?"

"When was it ever really on?"

"Oh, I know your view, and that, I think," said Mitchy, "is the most extraordinary part of it. I can tell you it would have put me on."

"My view?" Mrs. Brook thought. "Have you forgotten that I had for you too a view that didn't?"

"Ah, but we didn't differ, you and I. It wasn't a defiance and a prophecy. You wanted me." 389