One wouldn't have thought he could live with her here in such an intimacy--seeing her every day and pretty much all day--and make such a mistake." Vanderbank, his great length all of a lounge again, turned it over.

"And yet I do thoroughly feel the mistake's not yours." Mitchy had a new serenity of affirmation.

"Oh it's not mine." "Perhaps then"-- it occurred to his friend--"he doesn't really believe it." "And only says so to make you feel more easy ?" "So that one may--in fairness to one's self--keep one's head, as it were, and decide quite on one's own grounds." "Then you HAVE still to decide ?" Vanderbank took time to answer.

"I've still to decide." Mitchy became again on this, in the sociable dusk, a slow-circling vaguely-agitated element, and his companion continued: "Is your idea very generously and handsomely to help that by letting me know-- ?" "That I do definitely renounce"-- Mitchy took him up--"any pretension and any hope?
Well, I'm ready with a proof of it.

I've passed my word that I'll apply elsewhere." Vanderbank turned more round to him.