a while over the amenities about him. "He
hasn't such a view of himself alone--?"

"As to make him think he's enough as he stands? No," said Mitchy, "I
don't fancy he has a very awful view of himself alone. And since we ARE
burning this incense under his nose," he added, "it's also my impression
that he has no private means. Women in London cost so much."

Mr. Longdon had a pause. "They come very high, I dare say."

"Oh tremendously. They want so much--they want everything. I mean the
sort of women he lives with. A modest man--who's also poor--isn't in
it. I give you that at any rate as his view. There are lots of them that
would---and only too glad--'love him for himself'; but things are much
mixed, and these not necessarily the right ones, and at all events he
doesn't see it. The result of which is that he's waiting."

"Waiting to feel himself in love?"

Mitchy just hesitated. "Well, we're talking of marriage. Of course
you'll say there are women with money. There ARE"--he seemed for a
moment to meditate--"dreadful ones!"

The two men, on this, exchanged a long regard. "He mustn't do that."

Mitchy again hesitated. "He won't."

Mr. Longdon had also a silence, which he presently terminated by one of
his jerks into motion. "He shan't!"

Once more Mitchy watched him revolve a little, but now, familiarly yet
with a sharp emphasis, he himself resumed their colloquy. "See here, Mr.
Longdon. Are you seriously taking him up?"

Yet again, at the tone of this appeal, the old man perceptibly coloured.
It was as if his friend had brought to the surface an inward excitement,
and he laughed for embarrassment. "You see things with a freedom--"

"Yes, and it's so I express them. I see them, I know, with a raccourci;
but time after all rather presses, and at any rate we understand
each other. What I want now is just to say"--and Mitchy spoke with a
simplicity and a gravity he had not yet used--"that if your interest in
him should at any time reach the point of your wishing to do something
or other (no matter what, don't you see?) FOR him--!"

Mr. Longdon, as he faltered, appeared to wonder, but emitted a sound of
gentleness. "Yes?"

"Why," said the stimulated Mitchy, "do, for God's sake, just let me have
a finger in it."

Mr. Longdon's momentary mystification was perhaps partly but the natural
effect of constitutional prudence. "A finger?"

"I mean--let me help."

"Oh!" breathed the old man thoughtfully and without