THE AWKWARD AGE
"I did indeed!" Mrs. Brook said simply.
"And you didn't want him. For her, I mean. So you risked showing it."
She looked surprised. "Did I?"
Again they were face to face. "Your candor's divine!"
She wondered. "Do you mean it was even then?"
Mitchy smiled at her till he was red. "It's exquisite now."
"Well," she presently returned, "I knew my Van!"
"I thought I knew 'yours' too." Mitchy said. Their eyes met a minute, and he added: "But I didn't." Then he exclaimed: "How you've worked it!"
She looked barely conscious. "'Worked it'?" After which, with a slightly sharper note: "How do you know—while you've been amusing yourself in places that I'd give my head to see again, but never shall—what I've been doing?"
"Well, I saw, you know, that night at Tishy's, just before we left England, your wonderful start. I got a look at your attitude, as it were, and your system."
Her eyes were now far away, and she spoke, after an instant, without moving them. "And didn't I, by the same token, get a look at yours!"
"Mine?" Mitchy thought, but seemed to doubt. "My dear child, I hadn't any then."
"You mean that it has formed itself—your system—since?"
He shook his head with decision. "I assure you I'm quite at sea. I've never had, and I have as little as ever now, anything but my general philosophy, which I won't attempt at present to go into and of which, moreover, I think you've had, first and last, your glimpses. What I made out in you that night was a perfect policy."
Mrs. Brook had another of her infantine stares. "Every one, that night, seems to have made out some-
390
