uietly, almost as cautiously, as if on tiptoe, to the seat
occupied by his companion at the beginning of their talk. Here he sank
down watching the girl, who stood a while longer with her eyes on the
garden. "You want me, you say, to take her out of the Duchess's
life; but where am I myself, if we come to that, but even more IN the
Duchess's life than Aggie is? I'm in it by my contacts, my associations,
my indifferences--all my acceptances, knowledges, amusements. I'm in it
by my cynicisms--those that circumstances somehow from the first, when
I began for myself to look at life and the world, committed me to and
steeped me in; I'm in it by a kind of desperation that I shouldn't have
felt perhaps if you had got hold of me sooner with just this touch with
which you've got hold of me to-day; and I'm in it more than all--you'll
yourself admit--by the very fact that her aunt desires, as you know,
much more even than you do, to bring the thing about. Then we SHOULD
be--the Duchess and I--shoulder to shoulder!"

Nanda heard him motionless to the end, taking also another minute to
turn over what he had said. "What is it you like so in Lord Petherton?"
she asked as she came to him.

"My dear child, if you only could tell me! It would be, wouldn't it?--it
must have been--the subject of some fairy-tale, if fairy-tales were made
now, or better still of some Christmas pantomime: 'The Gnome and the
Giant.'"

Nanda appeared to try--not with much success--to see it. "Do you find
Lord Petherton a Gnome?"

Mitchy at first, for all reward, only glared at her. "Charming,
Nanda--charming!"

"A man's giant enough for Lord Petherton," she went on, "when his
fortune's gigantic. He preys upon you."

His hands in his pockets and his legs much apart, Mitchy sat there as in
a posture adapted to her simplicity. "You're adorable. YOU don't. But it
IS rather horrid, isn't it?" he presently went on.

Her momentary silence would have been by itself enough of an answer.
"Nothing--of all you speak of," she nevertheless returned, "will matter
then. She'll so simplify your life." He remained just as he was, only
with his eyes on her; and meanwhile she had turned again to her window,
through which a faint sun-streak began to glimmer and play. At sight of
it she opened the casement to let in the warm freshness. "The rain HAS
stopped."

"You say you want me to save her. But what you really mean," Mitchy
resumed from the sofa, "isn't at all exactly t