good humour
of our intercourse and the fact that we do care--so independently of our
personal interests, with so little selfishness or other vulgarity--to
get at the idea of things. The beautiful specimen Mrs. Brook had just
given me of that," he continued to Mitchy, "was what made me break
out to you about her when you came in." He spoke to one friend, but he
looked at the other. "What's really 'superior' in her is that, though
I suddenly show her an interference with a favourite plan, her personal
resentment's nothing--all she wants is to see what may really happen, to
take in the truth of the case and make the best of that. She offers me
the truth, as she sees it, about myself, and with no nasty elation if
it does chance to be the truth that suits her best. It was a charming,
charming stroke."

Mitchy's appreciation was no bar to his amusement. "You're wonderfully
right about us. But still it was a stroke."

If Mrs. Brook was less diverted she followed perhaps more closely. "If
you do me so much justice then, why did you put to me such a cold cruel
question?--I mean when you so oddly challenged me on my handing on your
news to Mitchy. If the principal beauty of our effort to live together
is--and quite according to your own eloquence--in our sincerity, I
simply obeyed the impulse to do the sincere thing. If we're not sincere
we're nothing."

"Nothing!"--it was Mitchy who first responded. "But we ARE sincere."

"Yes, we ARE sincere," Vanderbank presently said. "It's a great chance
for us not to fall below ourselves: no doubt therefore we shall continue
to soar and sing. We pay for it, people who don't like us say, in our
self-consciousness--"

"But people who don't like us," Mitchy broke in, "don't matter. Besides,
how can we be properly conscious of each other--?"

"That's it!"--Vanderbank completed his idea: "without my finding myself
for instance in you and Mrs. Brook? We see ourselves reflected--we're
conscious of the charming whole. I thank you," he pursued after an
instant to Mrs. Brook--"I thank you for your sincerity."

It was a business sometimes really to hold her eyes, but they had,
it must be said for her, their steady moments. She exchanged with
Vanderbank a somewhat remarkable look, then, with an art of her own,
broke short off without appearing to drop him. "The thing is, don't you
think?"--she appealed to Mitchy--"for us not to be so awfully clever
as to make it believed that we can never be s