Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/457

BOOK TENTH: NANDA everything, really, that in our last talk I told you, you know, it seemed to me best I should have out with myself before meeting you for what I suppose you've now in mind."

Mr. Longdon had kept his eyes on her, but at this he turned away; not, however, as an alternative, embracing her material situation with the embarrassed optimism of Vanderbank or the mitigated gloom of Mitchy. "Ah"—he took her up with some dryness—"you've been having things out with yourself?" But he went on before she answered: "I don't want any tea, thank you. I found myself, after five, in such a fidget that I went three times in the course of the hour to my club, where I have the impression that I each time had it. I dare say it wasn't there, though, that I did have it," he after an instant pursued, "for I've somehow a confused image of a shop in Oxford Street—or was it rather in Regent?—into which I gloomily wandered to beguile the moments with a liquid that if I strike you as upset I beg you to set it all down to. Do you know in fact what I've been doing for the last ten minutes? Roaming hither and thither in your beautiful Crescent till I could venture to come in."

"Then did you see Mitchy go out? But no, you wouldn't"—Nanda corrected herself. "He has been gone longer than that."

Her visitor had dropped upon a sofa where, propped by the back, he sat rather upright, his glasses on his nose, his hands in his pockets and his elbows much turned out. "Mitchy left you more than ten minutes ago, and yet your state on his departure remains such that there could be a bustle of servants in the room without your being aware? Kindly give me some light then on the condition into which he has plunged you."

She hovered before him with her obscure smile. "You see it for yourself." 447