“Nowhere, I see,” Vanderbank seemed obligingly to muse.
Mrs. Brook had followed Mitchy with marked admiration, but she gave on this a glance at Van that was like the toss of a blossom from the same branch. “Oh then shall I just go on with you BOTH? That WILL be joy!” She had, however, the next thing, a sudden drop which shaded the picture. “You’re so divine, Mitchy, that how can you not in the long-run break ANY woman down?”
It was not as if Mitchy was struck—it was only that he was courteous. “What do you call the long-run? Taking about till I’m eighty?”
“Ah your genius is of a kind to which middle life will be particularly favourable. You’ll reap then somehow, one feels, everything you’ve sown.”
Mitchy still accepted the prophecy only to control it. “Do you call eighty middle life? Why, my moral beauty, my dear woman—if that’s what you mean by my genius—is precisely my curse. What on earth—is left for a man just rotten with goodness? It renders necessary the kind of liking that renders unnecessary anything else.”
“Now that IS cheap paradox!” Vanderbank patiently sighed. “You’re down for a fine.”
It was with less of the patience perhaps that Mrs. Brook took this up. “Yes, on that we ARE stiff. Five pounds, please.”
Mitchy drew out his pocket-book even though he explained. “What I mean is that I don’t give out the great thing.” With which he produced a crisp banknote.
“DON’T you?” asked Vanderbank, who, having taken it from him to hand to Mrs. Brook, held it a moment, delicately, to accentuate the doubt.
“The great thing’s the sacred terror. It’s you who give THAT out.”