in
place longer than for any previous moment, and the spell continued for
a minute after Mitchy had paused. Then nervously and abruptly he turned
away, his friend watching him rather aimlessly wander. "Our host has
spoken of you to me in high terms," he said as he came back. "You'd have
no fault to find with them."

Mitchy took it with his highest light. "I know from your taking the
trouble to remember that, how much what I've said of him pleases and
touches you. We're a little sort of religion then, you and I; we're
an organisation of two, at any rate, and we can't help ourselves.
There--that's settled." He glanced at the clock on the chimney. "But
what's the matter with him?"

"You gentlemen dress so much," said Mr. Longdon.

Mitchy met the explanation quite halfway. "_I_ try to look funny--but
why should Apollo in person?"

Mr. Longdon weighed it. "Do you think him like Apollo?"

"The very image. Ask any of the women!"

"But do _I_ know--?"

"How Apollo must look?" Mitchy considered. "Why the way it works is that
it's just from Van's appearance they get the tip, and that then, don't
you see? they've their term of comparison. Isn't it what you call a
vicious circle? I borrow a little their vice."

Mr. Longdon, who had once more been arrested, once more sidled away.
Then he spoke from the other side of the expanse of a table covered with
books for which the shelves had no space--covered with portfolios, with
well-worn leather-cased boxes, with documents in neat piles. The place
was a miscellany, yet not a litter, the picture of an admirable order.
"If we're a fond association of two, you and I, let me, accepting your
idea, do what, this way, under a gentleman's roof and while enjoying his
hospitality, I should in ordinary circumstances think perhaps something
of a breach."

"Oh strike out!" Mitchy laughed. It possibly chilled his interlocutor,
who again hung fire so long that he himself at last adopted his image.
"Why doesn't he marry, you mean?"

Mr. Longdon fairly flushed with recognition. "You're very deep, but with
what we perceive--why doesn't he?"

Mitchy continued visibly to have his amusement, which might have been,
this time and in spite of the amalgamation he had pictured, for what
"they" perceived. But he threw off after an instant an answer clearly
intended to meet the case. "He thinks he hasn't the means. He has great
ideas of what a fellow must offer a woman."

Mr. Longdon's eyes travelled