Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/184

THE AWKWARD AGE "Well, I want one that holds twenty."

Vanderbank only threw out his smoke. "I want so to give you something," he said at last, "that in my relief at lighting on an object that will do, I will, if you don't look out, give you either that or a pipe."

"Do you mean this particular one?"

"I've had it for years—but even that one if you like it."

She kept it—continued to finger it. "And by whom was it given you?"

At this he turned to her smiling. "You think I've forgotten that too?"

"Certainly you must have forgotten, to be willing to give it away again."

"But how do you know it was a present?"

"Such things always are—people don't buy them for themselves."

She had now relinquished the object, laying it upon the bench, and Vanderbank took it up. "Its origin is lost in the night of time—it has no history except that I've used it. But I assure you that I do want to give you something. I've never given you anything."

She was silent a little. "The exhibition you're making," she seriously sighed at last, "of your inconstancy and superficiality! The relics of you that I have treasured and that I supposed at the time to have meant something!"

"The 'relics'? Have you a lock of my hair?" Then as her meaning came to him: "Oh, little Christmas things? Have you really kept them?"

"Laid away in a drawer of their own—done up in pink paper."

"I know what you're coming to," Vanderbank said. "You've given me things, and you're trying to convict me of having lost the sweet sense of them. But you can't do it. Where my heart's concerned I'm a walking reliquary. Pink paper? I use gold paper—and the finest 174