THE AWKWARD AGE
man. Must I again remind you that, with her own sitting-room and one of the men, in addition to her maid, wholly at her orders, her independence is ideal?"
Vanderbank, who appeared to have been timing himself, put up his watch. "I'm bound to say then that, with separations so established, I understand less than ever your unforgettable explosion."
"Ah, you come back to that?" she wearily asked. "And you find it, with all you've to think about, unforgettable?"
"Oh, but there was a wild light in your eye—!"
"Well," Mrs. Brook said, "you see it now quite gone out." She had spoken more sadly than sharply, but her impatience had the next moment a flicker. "I called Nanda in because I wanted to."
"Precisely; but what I don't make out, you see, is what you've since gained by it."
"You mean she only hates me the more?"
Van's impatience, in the movement with which he turned from her, had a flare still sharper. "You know I'm incapable of meaning anything of the sort."
She waited a minute while his back was presented. "I sometimes think, in effect, that you're incapable of anything straightforward."
Vanderbank's movement had not been to the door, but he almost reached it after giving her, on this, a hard look. He then stopped short, however, to stare an instant still more fixedly into the hat he held in his hand; the consequence of which, in turn, was that he, the next minute, stood again before her chair. "Don't you call it straightforward of me just not to have come for so long?"
She had again to take time to say. "Is that an allusion to what—by the loss of your beautiful presence—I've failed to 'gain'? I dare say at any rate"—she gave him no time to reply—"that you feel you're quite as straightforward as I, and that we're neither of us creatures of
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