Page:The Better Sort (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1903).djvu/54

THE BETTER SORT. Or Nina, without waiting for that, may cast her forth."

I faced it all. "Then we should have to keep her."

"As a regular model?" Mrs. Munden was ready for anything. "Oh, that would be lovely!"

But I further worked it out. "The difficulty is that she's not a model, hang it—that she's too good for one, that she's the very thing herself. When Outreau and I have each had our go, that will be all; there'll be nothing left for anyone else. Therefore it behoves us quite to understand that our attitude's a responsibility. If we can't do for her positively more than Nina does"

"We must let her alone?" My companion continued to muse. "I see!"

"Yet don't," I returned, "see too much. We can do more."

"Than Nina?" She was again on the spot. "It wouldn't, after all, be difficult. We only want the directly opposite thing—and which is the only one the poor dear can give. Unless, indeed," she suggested, "we simply retract—we back out."

I turned it over. "It's too late for that. Whether Mrs. Brash's peace is gone, I can't say. But Nina's is."

"Yes, and there's no way to bring it back that won't sacrifice her friend. We can't turn round and say Mrs. Brash is ugly, can we? But fancy Nina's not having seen!" Mrs. Munden exclaimed.

"She doesn't see now," I answered. "She can't, I'm certain, make out what we mean. The woman, for her still, is just what she always was. But she has, nevertheless, had her stroke, and her blindness, while she wavers and gropes in the dark, only adds to her discomfort. Her blow was to see the attention of the world deviate."

"All the same, I don't think, you know," my interlocutress said, "that Nina will have made her a scene, 42