Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/378

THE AWKWARD AGE "Oh, 'gossip'!" Vanderbank wearily said, as he came to her pretty table.

In the act of serving him she checked herself. "You wouldn't rather have it with her?"

He balanced a moment. "Does she have a tea of her own?"

"Do you mean to say you don't know?"—Mrs. Brook asked it with surprise. "Such ignorance of what I do for her does tell, I think, the tale of how you've lately treated us."

"In not coming for so long?"

"For more weeks, for more months than I can count. Scarcely since—when was it?—the end of January, that night of Tishy's dinner."

"Yes—that awful night."

"Awful, you call it?"

"Awful."

"Well, the time without you," Mrs. Brook returned, "has been so bad that I'm afraid I've lost the impression of anything before." Then she offered the tea to his choice. "Will you take it upstairs?"

He received the cup. "Yes, and here too." After which he said nothing again till, first pouring in milk to cool it, he had drunk his tea down. "That's not literally true, you know. I have been in."

"Yes, but always with other people—you managed it somehow; the wrong ones. It hasn't counted."

"Ah, in one way and another, I think everything counts. And you forget I've dined."

"Oh—for once!"

"The once you asked me. So don't spoil the beauty of your own behavior by mistimed reflections. You've been, as usual, superior."

"Ah, but there has been no beauty in it. There has been nothing," Mrs. Brook went on, "but bare, bleak recognition, the curse of my hideous intelligence. We've 368