THE BETTER SORT
your arms. Intelligent as you are, and with these three or four hours to have thought it over, I yet don't see how that can fail still to mystify you."
She continued to watch their opposite neighbours. "'Little,' you call her. Is she so very small?"
"Tiny, tiny—she must be; as different as possible in every way—of necessity—from you. They always are the opposite pole, you know," said Shirley Sutton.
She glanced at him now. "You strike me as of an impudence———!"
"No, no. I only like to make it out with you."
She looked away again and, after a little, went on. "I'm sure she's charming, and only hope one isn't to gather that he's already tired of her."
"Not a bit! He's tremendously in love, and he'll remain so."
"So much the better. And if it's a question," said Mrs. Grantham, "of one's doing what one can for her, he has only, as I told him when you had gone, to give me the chance."
"Good! So he is to commit her to you?"
"You use extraordinary expressions, but it's settled that he brings her."
"And you'll really and truly help her?"
"Really and truly?" said Mrs. Grantham, with her eyes again upon him. "Why not? For what do you take me?"
"Ah, isn't that just what I still have the discomfort, every day I live, of asking myself?"
She had made, as she spoke, a movement to rise, which, as if she was tired of his tone, his last words appeared to determine. But, also getting up, he held her, when they were on their feet, long enough to hear the rest of what he had to say. "If you do help her, you know, you'll show him that you've understood."
"Understood what?"
"Why, his idea—the deep, acute train of reasoning
58
