"Why so--if mine wasn't ?" "Oh you're not me!" "But I'm just as bad." "Thank you, my dear!" Mitchy rang out.
"Without," Nanda pursued, "being as good." She had on this, in a different key, her own sudden explosion.

"Don't you see, Mitchy dear--for the very heart of it all--how good I BELIEVE you ?" She had spoken as with a flare of impatience at some justice he failed to do her, and this brought him after a startled instant close enough to her to take up her hand.

She let him have it, and in mute solemn reassurance he raised it to his lips, saying to her thus more things than he could say in any other way; which yet just after, when he had released it and a motionless pause had ensued, didn't prevent his adding three words.

"Oh Nanda, Nanda!" The tone of them made her again extraordinarily gentle.

"Don't 'try' anything then.