“Oh!” It was not irritation he appeared to express, but the slight strain of an effort to get into relation with the subject. Better to focus the image he closed his eyes a while.
“You speak of something that may draw us together, and I simply reply that if you don’t feel how near together we are—in this I shouldn’t imagine you ever would. You must have wonderful notions,” she presently went on, “of the ideal state of union. I pack every one off for you—I banish everything that can interfere, and I don’t in the least mind your knowing that I find the consequence delightful. YOU may talk, if you like, of what will have passed between us, but I shall never mention it to a soul; literally not to a living creature. What do you want more than that?” He opened his eyes in deference to the question, but replied only with a gaze as unassisted as if it had come through a hole in a curtain. “You say you’re ready for an adventure, and it’s just an adventure that I propose. If I can make you feel for yourself as I feel for you the beauty of your chance to go in and save her—!”
“Well, if you can—?” Mitchy at last broke in. “I don’t think, you know,” he said after a moment, “you’ll find it easy to make your two ends meet.”
She thought a little longer. “One of the ends is yours, so that you’ll act WITH me. If I wind you up so that you go—!”
“You’ll just happily sit and watch me spin? Thank you! THAT will be my reward?”
Nanda rose on this from her chair as with the impulse of protest. “Shan’t you care for my gratitude, my admiration?”
“Oh yes”—Mitchy seemed to muse. “I shall care for THEM. Yet I don’t quite see, you know, what you OWE to Aggie. It isn’t as if—!” But with this he faltered.
“As if she cared particularly for ME? Ah that has nothing to do with it; that’s a thing without which surely it’s but too possible to be exquisite. There are beautiful, quite beautiful people who don’t care for me. The thing that’s important to one is the thing one sees one’s self, and it’s quite enough if I see what can be made of that child. Marry her, Mitchy, and you’ll see who she’ll care for!”
Mitchy kept his position; he was for the moment—his image of shortly before reversed—the one who appeared to sit happily and watch. “It’s too awfully pleasant your asking of me anything whatever!”
“Well then, as I say, beautifully, grandly save her.”