Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/412

THE AWKWARD AGE "No," Mr. Longdon attentively assented; "she'll hardly fear we're plotting her ruin. But what has happened to her?" he more sharply demanded.

"Well," said Mitchy, "it's you, I think, who will have to give it a name. I know you know what I've known."

Mr. Longdon, with his nippers again placed, hesitated. "Yes, I know."

"And you've accepted it."

"How could I help it? To reckon with such cleverness—"

"Was beyond you? Ah, it wasn't my cleverness," Mitchy said. "There's a greater than mine. There's a greater even than Van's. That's the whole point," he went on while his friend looked at him hard. "You don't even like it just a little?"

Mr. Longdon wondered. "The existence of such a element—?"

"No; the existence, simply, of my knowledge of your idea."

"I suppose I'm bound to keep in mind in fairness the existence of my own knowledge of yours."

But Mitchy gave that the go-by. "Oh, I've so many 'ideas'! I'm always getting hold of some new one and, for the most part, trying it—generally to let it go as a failure. Yes, I had one six months ago. I tried that. I'm trying it still."

"Then I hope," said Mr. Longdon, with a gaiety slightly strained, "that, contrary to your usual rule, it's a success."

It was a gaiety, for that matter, that Mitchy's could match. "It does promise well! But I've another idea even now, and it's just what I'm again trying."

"On me?" Mr. Longdon still somewhat extravagantly smiled.

Mitchy thought. "Well, on two or three persons, of whom you are the first for me to tackle. But what I 402