Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/228

THE AWKWARD AGE of the young man's honesty. He evidently at last felt it as such, and there would have been for an observer of his handsome, controlled face a study of some sharp things. "I judge that you ask me for an utterance," he finally said, "that very few persons, at any time, have the right to expect of a man. Think of the people—and very decent ones—to whom, on many a question, one can only reply at best that it's none of their business.'"

"I see you know what I mean," said Mr. Longdon.

"Then you know also the distinguished exception I make of you. There isn't another man with whom I'd talk of it."

"And even to me you don't! But I'm none the less obliged to you," Mr. Longdon added.

"It isn't only the gravity," his friend went on; "it's the ridicule that inevitably attaches—"

The manner in which Mr. Longdon indicated the empty room was in itself an interruption. "Don't I sufficiently spare you?"

"Thank you, thank you," said Vanderbank.

"Besides, it's not for nothing."

"Of course not!" the young man returned; but with a look of noting, the next moment, a certain awkwardness in his concurrence. "But don't spare me now."

"I don't mean to." Mr. Longdon had his back to the table again, on which he rested with each hand on the rim. "I don't mean to," he repeated.

His companion gave a laugh that betrayed at least the drop of a tension. "Yet I don't quite see what you can do to me."

"It's just what, for some time past, I've been trying to think."

"And at last you've discovered?"

"Well—it has finally glimmered out a little in this extraordinary place." 218