"Of the man himself and his type of mind? Surely. Don't _you_? He talks
to talk, but he's really amusing."
I was watching our companions. "Indeed he is--extraordinarily amusing."
It was highly interesting to me to hear at last of Long's "type of
mind." "See how amusing he is at the present moment to Mrs. Server."
Obert took this in; she was convulsed, in the extravagance always so
pretty as to be pardonable, with laughter, and she even looked over at
us as if to intimate with her shining, lingering eyes that we wouldn't
be surprised at her transports if we suspected what her entertainer,
whom she had never known for such a humourist, was saying. Instead of
going to find out, all the same, we remained another minute together. It
was for me, now, I could see, that Obert had his best attention. "What's
the matter with them?"
It startled me almost as much as if he had asked me what was the matter
with myself--for that something _was_, under this head, I was by this
time unable to ignore. Not twenty minutes had elapsed since our meeting
with Mrs. Server on the terrace had determined Grace Brissenden's
elation, but it was a fact that my nervousness had taken an
extraordinary stride. I had perhaps not till this instant been fully
aware of it--it was really brought out by the way Obert looked at me as
if he fancied he had heard me shake. Mrs. Server might be natural, and
Gilbert Long might be, but I should not preserve that calm unless I
pulled myself well together. I made the effort, facing my sharp
interlocutor; and I think it was at this point that I fully measured my
dismay. I had grown--that was what was the matter with me--precipitately,
preposterously anxious. Instead of dropping, the discomfort produced in
me by Mrs. Brissenden had deepened to agitation, and this in spite of
the fact that in the brief interval nothing worse, nothing but what was
right, had happened. Had I myself suddenly fallen so much in love with
Mrs. Server that the care for her reputation had become with me an
obsession? It was of no use saying I simply pitied her: what did I pity
her for if she wasn't in danger? She _was_ in danger: that rushed over
me at present--rushed over me while I tried to look easy and delayed to
answer my friend. She _was_ in danger--if only because she had caught
and held the search-light of Obert's attention. I took up his inquiry.
"The matter with them? I don't know anything but that they're young and
handsome and happy--children, as who should say, of the world; children
of leisure and pleasure and privilege."
Obert's eyes went back to them. "Do you remember what I said to you
about her yesterday afternoon? She darts from flower to flower, but she
clings, for the time, to each. You've been feeling, I judge, the force
of my remark."
"Oh, she didn't at all 'dart,'" I replied, "just now at me. I darted,
much rather, at _her_."
"Long didn't, then," Obert said, still with his eyes on them.