st unrolled. "You're
wild," she said simply--"you're wild."

He wonderfully glared. "Am I then already frightening you?" He shook his
head rather sadly. "I'm not in the least trying yet. There's something,"
he added after an instant, "that I do want too awfully to ask you."

"Well then--!" If she had not eagerness she had at least charity.

"Oh but you see I reflect that though you show all the courage to go
to the roots and depths with ME, I'm not--I never have been--fully
conscious of the nerve for doing as much with you. It's a question,"
Mitchy explained, "of how much--of a particular matter--you know."

She continued ever so kindly to face him. "Hasn't it come out all round
now that I know everything?"

Her reply, in this form, took a minute or two to operate, but when it
began to do so it fairly diffused a light. Mitchy's face turned of a
colour that might have been produced by her holding close to it some
lantern wonderfully glazed. "You know, you know!" he then rang out.

"Of course I know."

"You know, you know!" Mitchy repeated.

"Everything," she imperturbably went on, "but what you're talking
about."

He was silent a little, his eyes on her. "May I kiss your hand?"

"No," she answered: "that's what I call wild."

He had risen with his question and after her reply he remained a moment
on the spot. "See--I've frightened you. It proves as easy as that. But
I only wanted to show you and to be sure for myself. Now that I've the
mental certitude I shall never wish otherwise to use it." He turned away
to begin again one of his absorbed revolutions. "Mr. Longdon has asked
you this time for a grand public adhesion, and what he turns up for now
is to receive your ultimatum? A final irrevocable flight with him is
the line he advises, so that he'll be ready for it on the spot with the
post-chaise and the pistols?"

The image appeared really to have for Nanda a certain vividness, and
she looked at it a space without a hint of a smile. "We shan't need any
pistols, whatever may be decided about the post-chaise; and any flight
we may undertake together will need no cover of secrecy or night.
Mother, as I've told you--"

"Won't fling herself across your reckless path? I remember," said
Mitchy--"you alluded to her magnificent resignation. But father?" he
oddly demanded.

Nanda thought for this a moment longer. "Well, Mr. Longdon has--off in
the country--a good deal of shooting."

"So that Edward can sometim