"The only way for Nanda to have been REALLY nice--!" "Would have been for YOU to be like Jane ?" Mitchy and his hostess seemed for a minute, on this, to gaze together at the tragic truth.

Then she shook her head.

"We see our mistakes too late." She repeated the movement, but as if to let it all go, and Vanderbank meanwhile, pulling out his watch, had got up with a laugh that showed some inattention and made to Mitchy a remark about their walking away together.

Mitchy, engaged for the instant with Mrs.Brook, had assented only with a nod, but the attitude of the two men had become that of departure.

Their friend looked at them as if she would like to keep one of them, and for a purpose connected somehow with the other, but was oddly, almost ludicrously, embarrassed to choose.