Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/34

THE AWKWARD AGE Mr. Longdon looked happy in such a prospect, but he once more took out his watch. "It wants five minutes to midnight. Which means that I must go now."

"Not in the least. There are satisfactions you too must give." Vanderbank, with an irresistible hand, confirmed him in his position and pressed upon him another cigarette. His resistance rang hollow—it was clearly, he judged, such an occasion for sacrifices. His companion's view of it, meanwhile, was quite as marked. "You see there's ever so much more you must in common kindness tell me."

Mr. Longdon sat there like a shy singer invited to strike up. "I told you everything at Mrs. Brookenham's. It comes over me now how I dropped on you."

"What you told me," Vanderbank returned, "was excellent so far as it went; but it was only, after all, that, having caught my name, you had asked of our friend if I belonged to people you had known years before, and then, from what she had said, had, with what you were so good as to call great pleasure, made out that I did. You came round to me, on this, after dinner, and gave me a pleasure still greater. But that only takes us part of the way." Mr. Longdon said nothing, but there was something appreciative in his conscious lapses; they were a tribute to his young friend's frequent felicity. This personage indeed appeared more and more to take them for that; which was not without its effect upon his spirits. At last, with a flight of some freedom, he brought their pause to a close. "You loved Lady Julia." Then, as the attitude of his guest, who serenely met his eyes, was practically a contribution to the subject, he went on with a feeling that he had positively pleased. "You lost her, and you're unmarried."

Mr. Longdon's smile was beautiful—it supplied so many meanings that when presently he spoke he seemed already to have told half his story. "Well, my life took 24