erence between my speech
and my grandmother's."

"Of course," the young man understandingly assented. "But I rather like
your speech. Hasn't he by this time, with you," he pursued, "crossed the
gulf? He has with me."

"Ah with you there was no gulf. He liked you from the first."

Vanderbank wondered. "You mean I managed him so well?"

"I don't know how you managed him, but liking me has been for him a
painful gradual process. I think he does now," Nanda declared. "He
accepts me at last as different--he's trying with me on that basis. He
has ended by understanding that when he talks to me of Granny I can't
even imagine her."

Vanderbank puffed away. "I can."

"That's what Mitchy says too. But you've both probably got her wrong."

"I don't know," said Vanderbank--"I've gone into it a good deal. But
it's too late. We can't be Greeks if we would."

Even for this Nanda had no laugh, though she had a quick attention. "Do
you call Granny a Greek?"

Her companion slowly rose. "Yes--to finish her off handsomely and have
done with her." He looked again at his watch. "Shall we go? I want to
see if my man and my things have turned up."

She kept her seat; there was something to revert to. "My fear of you
isn't superficial. I mean it isn't immediate--not of you just as you
stand," she explained. "It's of some dreadfully possible future you."

"Well," said the young man, smiling down at her, "don't forget that
if there's to be such a monster there'll also be a future you,
proportionately developed, to deal with him."

She had closed her parasol in the shade and her eyes attached themselves
to the small hole she had dug in the ground with its point. "We shall
both have moved, you mean?"

"It's charming to feel we shall probably have moved together."

"Ah if moving's changing," she returned, "there won't be much for me in
that. I shall never change--I shall be always just the same. The same
old mannered modern slangy hack," she continued quite gravely. "Mr.
Longdon has made me feel that."

Vanderbank laughed aloud, and it was especially at her seriousness.
"Well, upon my soul!"

"Yes," she pursued, "what I am I must remain. I haven't what's called
a principle of growth." Making marks in the earth with her umbrella she
appeared to cipher it out. "I'm about as good as I can be--and about as
bad. If Mr. Longdon can't make me different nobody can."

Vanderbank could only speak in the tone of high amusement. "And he has