ike his
grandmother?" the girl pursued. Then as her companion looked vague:
"Wasn't it his grandmother too you knew?"

He had an extraordinary smile. "His mother."

She exclaimed, colouring, on her mistake, and he added: "I'm not so bad
as that. But you're none of you like them."

"Wasn't she pretty?" Nanda asked.

"Very handsome. But it makes no difference. She herself to-day wouldn't
know him."

She gave a small gasp. "His own mother wouldn't--?"

His headshake just failed of sharpness. "No, nor he her. There's a link
missing." Then as if after all she might take him too seriously, "Of
course it's I," he more gently moralised, "who have lost the link in my
sleep. I've slept half the century--I'm Rip Van Winkle." He went back
after a moment to her question. "He's not at any rate like his mother."

She turned it over. "Perhaps you wouldn't think so much of her now."

"Perhaps not. At all events my snatching you from Mr. Vanderbank was my
own idea."

"I wasn't thinking," Nanda said, "of your snatching me. I was thinking
of your snatching yourself."

"I might have sent YOU to the house? Well," Mr. Longdon replied, "I find
I take more and more the economical view of my pleasures. I run them
less and less together. I get all I can out of each."

"So now you're getting all you can out of ME?"

"All I can, my dear--all I can." He watched a little the flushed
distance, then mildly broke out: "It IS, as you said just now, exciting!
But it makes me"--and he became abrupt again--"want you, as I've already
told you, to come to MY place. Not, however, that we may be still more
mad together."

The girl shared from the bench his contemplation. "Do you call THIS
madness?"

Well, he rather stuck to it. "You spoke of it yourself as excitement.
You'll make of course one of your fine distinctions, but I take it in my
rough way as a whirl. We're going round and round." In a minute he had
folded his arms with the same closeness Vanderbank had used--in a minute
he too was nervously shaking his foot. "Steady, steady; if we sit close
we shall see it through. But come down to Suffolk for sanity."

"You do mean then that I may come alone?"

"I won't receive you, I assure you, on any other terms. I want to show
you," he continued, "what life CAN give. Not of course," he subjoined,
"of this sort of thing."

"No--you've told me. Of peace."

"Of peace," said Mr. Longdon. "Oh you don't know--you haven't the least
idea. That's