Page:The Better Sort (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1903).djvu/24

THE BETTER SORT account of some other matter he had just touched, "Don't you really know?"

She had paused. "Know what?"

Again she went on without heeding. "A place like Mundham is, for me, a survival, though poor Mundham in particular won't, for me, have survived that visit—for which it's to be pitied, isn't it? It was a glittering ghost—since laid!—of my old time."

Straith, at this almost gave a start. "Have you got a new time?"

"Do you mean that you have?"

"Well," said Straith, "mine may now be called middle-aged. It seems so long, I mean, since I set my watch to it."

"Oh, I haven't even a watch!" she returned with a laugh. "I'm beyond watches." After which she added: "We might have met more—or, I should say perhaps, have got more out of it when we have met."

"Yes, it has been too little. But I've always explained it by our living in such different worlds."

Mrs. Harvey had an occasional incoherence. "Are you unhappy?"

He gave her a singular smile. "You said just now that you're beyond watches. I'm beyond unhappiness."

She turned from him and presently brought out: "I ought absolutely to take away something of the play."

"By all means. There's certainly something I shall take."

"Ah, then you must help me—give it me."

"With all my heart," said Straith, "if it can help you. It's my feeling of our renewal."

She had one of the sad, slow head-shakes that at Mundham had been impressive to Lady Claude. "That won't help me."

"Then you must let me put to you now what I should have tried to get near enough to you there to 12