Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/401

BOOK NINTH: VANDERBANK ! All I can say is, at any rate," she went on, "that in that case you were all far deeper than I was."

"It was just a blind instinct, without a programme or a scheme? Perhaps then, since it has so perfectly succeeded, the name doesn't matter. I'm lost, as I tell you," Mitchy declared, "in admiration of its success."

She looked, as before, so young, yet so grave. "What do you call its success?"

"Let me ask you rather—mayn't I?—what you call its failure."

Mrs. Brook, who had been standing for some minutes, seated herself, at this, as if to respond to his call. But the next moment she had fallen back into thought. "Have you often heard from him?"

"Never once."

"And have you written?"

"Not a word either. I left it, you see," Mitchy smiled, "all to you." After which he continued: "Has he been with you much?"

She just hesitated. "As little as possible. But, as it happens, he was here just now."

Her visitor fairly flushed. "And I've only missed him?"

Her pause again was of the briefest. "You wouldn't if he had gone up."

"'Gone up'?"

"To Nanda, who has now her own sitting-room, as you know, for whom he immediately asked, and for whose benefit, whatever you may think, I was, at the end of a quarter of an hour I assure you, perfectly ready to release him. He changed his mind, however, and went away without seeing her."

Mitchy showed the deepest interest. "And what made him change his mind?"

"Well, I'm thinking it out."

He appeared to watch this labor. "But with no light yet?" 391