person with whom she wished more to be light and easy, to
be exceptionally human. The account he presently gave of the matter was
that he indeed wouldn't have come if he had known she was on the spot;
because then, didn't she see? he could have written to her. He would
have had her there to let fly at his mother.

"That would have saved me--well, it would have saved me a lot. Of course
I would rather see you than her," he somewhat awkwardly added. "When the
fellow spoke of you, I assure you I quite jumped at you. In fact I've no
real desire to see Mummy at all. If she thinks I _like_ it--!" He sighed
disgustedly. "I only came down because it seemed better than any other
way. I didn't want her to be able to say I hadn't been all right. I dare
say you know she has taken everything; or if not quite everything, why,
a lot more than one ever dreamed. You can see for yourself--she has got
half the place down. She has got them crammed--you can see for
yourself!" He had his old trick of artless repetition, his helpless
iteration of the obvious; but he was sensibly different, for Fleda, if
only by the difference of his clear face, mottled over and almost
disfigured by little points of pain. He might have been a fine young man
with a bad toothache; with the first even of his life. What ailed him
above all, she felt, was that trouble was new to him: he had never known
a difficulty; he had taken all his fences, his world wholly the world of
the personally possible, rounded indeed by a gray suburb into which he
had never had occasion to stray. In this vulgar and ill-lighted region
he had evidently now lost himself. "We left it quite to her honor, you
know," he said ruefully.

"Perhaps you've a right to say that you left it a little to mine." Mixed
up with the spoils there, rising before him as if she were in a manner
their keeper, she felt that she must absolutely dissociate herself. Mrs.
Gereth had made it impossible to do anything but give her away. "I can
only tell you that, on my side, I left it to her. I never dreamed either
that she would pick out so many things."

"And you don't really think it's fair, do you? You _don't_!" He spoke
very quickly; he really seemed to plead.

Fleda faltered a moment. "I think she has gone too far." Then she added:
"I shall immediately tell her that I've said that to you."

He appeared puzzled by this statement, but he presently rejoined: "You
haven't then said to mamma what you think?"

"