Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/446

THE AWKWARD AGE Mitchy, after an instant, risked it. "But what other matter?"

"Oh, he says that when I speak to him, Mr. Longdon will know."

Mitchy gravely took this in. "And shall you speak to him?"

"For Mr. Van?" How, she seemed to ask, could he doubt it? "Why, the very first thing."

"And then will Mr. Longdon tell you?"

"What Mr. Van means?" Nanda thought. "Well—I hope not."

Mitchy followed it up. "You 'hope'—?"

"Why, if it's anything that could possibly make any one like him any less. I mean I sha'n't in that case in the least want to hear it."

Mitchy looked as if he could understand that and yet could also imagine something of a conflict. "But if Mr. Longdon insists—?"

"On making me know? I sha'n't let him insist. Would you?" she put to him.

"Oh, I'm not in question!"

"Yes, you are!" she quite rang out.

"Ah—!" Mitchy laughed. After which he added: "Well then, I might overbear you."

"No, you mightn't," she as positively declared again, "and you wouldn't at any rate desire to."

This he finally showed he could take from her—showed it in the silence in which, for a minute, their eyes met; then showed it perhaps even more in his deep exclamation: "You're complete!"

For such a proposition as well she had the same detached sense. "I don't think I am in anything but the wish to keep you so."

"Well—keep me, keep me! It strikes me that I'm not at all now on a footing, you know, of keeping myself. I quite give you notice in fact," Mitchy went on, 436