Mr. Longdon remained mute a while, and when he at last, raised his eyes
it was without meeting Nanda's and with some dryness of manner. "The end
of everything? One might easily receive that impression."

He again became mute, and there was a pause between them of some length,
accepted by Nanda with an anxious stillness that it might have touched a
spectator to observe. She sat there as if waiting for some further sign,
only wanting not to displease her friend, yet unable to pretend to play
any part and with something in her really that she couldn't take back
now, something involved in her original assumption that there was to
be a kind of intelligence in their relation. "I dare say," she said at
last, "that I make allusions you don't like. But I keep forgetting."

He waited a moment longer, then turned to her with a look rendered a
trifle strange by the way it happened to reach over his glasses. It was
even austerer than before. "Keep forgetting what?"

She gave after an instant a faint feeble smile which seemed to speak of
helplessness and which, when at rare moments it played in her face, was
expressive from her positive lack of personal, superficial diffidence.
"Well--I don't know." It was as if appearances became at times
so complicated that--so far as helping others to understand was
concerned--she could only give up.

"I hope you don't think I want you to be with me as you wouldn't be--so
to speak--with yourself. I hope you don't think I don't want you to
be frank. If you were to try to APPEAR to me anything--!" He ended in
simple sadness: that, for instance, would be so little what he should
like.

"Anything different, you mean, from what I am? That's just what I've
thought from the first. One's just what one IS--isn't one? I don't mean
so much," she went on, "in one's character or temper--for they have,
haven't they? to be what's called 'properly controlled'--as in one's
mind and what one sees and feels and the sort of thing one notices."
Nanda paused an instant; then "There you are!" she simply but rather
desperately brought out.

Mr. Longdon considered this with visible intensity. "What you suggest is
that the things you speak of depend on other people?"

"Well, every one isn't so beautiful as you." She had met him with
promptitude, yet no sooner had she spoken than she appeared again to
encounter a difficulty. "But there it is--my just saying even that. Oh
how I always know--as I've told you before-