He had been wondering about Nancy ever since he had come. It was not her voice, gentle and meditative, that told him now she was unhappy. It was rather in contrast to the bird’s clear ecstasy that he felt the heaviness of her heart.
“It’s wilder than the thrush and blackbird, isn’t it?” he said. “Less conscious. The thrush is always listening to himself, I feel. Do you want to go to the Alps with Miss Toner, Nancy?”
Nancy would not see Miss Toner as an angelic being and he wanted to know how she did see her. The others, it was evident, thought her angelic by a sort of group suggestion. She thought herself so, to begin with; snow, flowers, bells and all the rest of it; and they, ingenuous creatures, saw the mango-tree rising to heaven as the calm-eyed Yogi willed they should. But Nancy did not see the mango-tree. She was outside the group consciousness—with him.
“Oh, no!” she now said quickly; and she added: “I don’t mean that I don’t like her. It’s only that I don’t know her. How can she want us? She came only yesterday.”
“But, you see, she means you to know her. And when she’s known she couldn’t imagine that anyone wouldn’t like her.”
“I don’t think she’s conceited, if you mean that, Roger.”
“Conceit,” he rejoined, “may be of an order so monstrous that it loses all pettiness. You’ve seen more of her than I have, of course.”
“I think she’s good. She wants to do good. She wants to make people happy; and she does,” said Nancy.
“By taking them about in motors, you mean.”
“In every way. She’s always thinking about pleasing them. In big and little ways. Aunt Eleanor loves her already. They had a long talk last night in Aunt Eleanor’s room. She’s given Meg the most beautiful little pendant—pearl and amethyst, an old Italian setting. She had it on last night and Meg said how lovely it was and she simply lifted it off her own neck and put it around Meg’s. Meg had to keep it. She gave it in such a way that one would have to keep it.”