ently from one of them to the other; but it was to Nanda he
spoke. "Do you like him, Nanda?"

She showed surprise at the question. "How can I know so soon?"

"HE knows already."

Mitchy, with his eyes on her, became radiant to interpret. "He knows
that he's pierced to the heart!"

"The matter with him, as you call it," Vanderbank brought out, "is one
of the most beautiful things I've ever seen." He looked at her as with a
hope she'd understand. "Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!"

"Precisely," Mitchy continued; "the victim done for by one glance of the
goddess!"

Nanda, motionless in her chair, fixed her other friend with clear
curiosity. "'Beautiful'? Why beautiful?"

Vanderbank, about to speak, checked himself.

"I won't spoil it. Have it from HIM!"--and, returning to their friend,
he this time went out.

Mitchy and Nanda looked at each other. "But isn't it rather awful?"
Mitchy demanded.

She got up without answering; she slowly came away from the table. "I
think I do know if I like him."

"Well you may," Mitchy exclaimed, "after his putting before you
probably, on the whole, the greatest of your triumphs."

"And I also know, I think, Mr. Mitchy, that I like YOU." She spoke
without attention to this hyperbole.

"In spite of my ineffectual attempts to be brilliant? That's a joy," he
went on, "if it's not drawn out by the mere clumsiness of my flattery."
She had turned away from him, kindly enough, as if time for his talk in
the air were always to be allowed him: she took in vaguely Vanderbank's
books and prints. "Why didn't your mother come?" Mitchy then enquired.

At this she again looked at him. "Do you mention her as a way of
alluding to something you guess she must have told me?"

"That I've always supposed I make your flesh creep? Yes," Mitchy
admitted; "I see she must have said to you: 'Be nice to him, to show him
it isn't quite so bad as that!' So you ARE nice--so you always WILL be
nice. But I adore you, all the same, without illusions."

She had opened at one of the tables, unperceivingly, a big volume of
which she turned the leaves. "Don't 'adore' a girl, Mr. Mitchy--just
help her. That's more to the purpose."

"Help you?" he cried. "You bring tears to my eyes!"

"Can't a girl have friends?" she went on. "I never heard of anything
so idiotic." Giving him, however, no chance to take her up on this, she
made a quick transition. "Mother didn't come because she wants me now,
as she says, mo