ck to him seemed to say, that
deserved a responsible answer. "Yes."

But she had moved off after speaking, and Mitchy's eyes followed her to
different parts of the room as, with small pretexts of present attention
to it, small bestowed touches for symmetry, she slowly measured it.
"What's extraordinary then is your idea of my finding any charm in
Aggie's ignorance."

She immediately put down an old snuff-box. "Why--it's the one sort of
thing you don't know. You can't imagine," she said as she returned to
him, "the effect it will produce on you. You must get really near it and
see it all come out to feel all its beauty. You'll like it, Mitchy"--and
Nanda's gravity was wonderful--"better than anything you HAVE known."

The clear sincerity of this, even had there been nothing else, imposed
a consideration that Mitchy now flagrantly could give, and the deference
of his suggestion of difficulty only grew more deep. "I'm to do then,
with this happy condition of hers, what you say YOU'VE done--to 'try'
it?" And then as her assent, so directly challenged, failed an instant:
"But won't my approach to it, however cautious, be just what will break
it up and spoil it?"

Nanda thought. "Why so--if mine wasn't?"

"Oh you're not me!"

"But I'm just as bad."

"Thank you, my dear!" Mitchy rang out.

"Without," Nanda pursued, "being as good." She had on this, in a
different key, her own sudden explosion. "Don't you see, Mitchy
dear--for the very heart of it all--how good I BELIEVE you?"

She had spoken as with a flare of impatience at some justice he failed
to do her, and this brought him after a startled instant close enough
to her to take up her hand. She let him have it, and in mute solemn
reassurance he raised it to his lips, saying to her thus more things
than he could say in any other way; which yet just after, when he had
released it and a motionless pause had ensued, didn't prevent his adding
three words. "Oh Nanda, Nanda!"

The tone of them made her again extraordinarily gentle. "Don't 'try'
anything then. Take everything for granted."

He had turned away from her and walked mechanically, with his air of
blind emotion, to the window, where for a minute he looked out. "It has
stopped raining," he said at last; "it's going to brighten."

The place had three windows, and Nanda went to the next. "Not quite
yet--but I think it will."

Mitchy soon faced back into the room, where after a brief hesitation he
moved, as q