THE AWKWARD AGE
have to take account, on my side, of the rest I may deprive you of?"
"Don't take account of anything—I'm myself a man who always takes too much. It isn't a matter about which I press you for an immediate answer. You can give me no answer, probably, without a good deal of thought. I've thought a good deal—otherwise I wouldn't speak. I only want to put something before you and leave it there."
"I never see you," said Vanderbank, "that you don't put something before me."
"That sounds," his friend returned, "as if I rather overloaded—what's the sort of thing you fellows nowadays say?—your intellectual board. If there's a congestion of dishes, sweep everything, without scruple, away. I've never put before you anything like this."
He spoke with a weight that, in the great space, where it resounded a little, made an impression—an impression marked by the momentary pause that fell between them. He partly broke the silence, first, by beginning to walk again, and then Vanderbank broke it as through the apprehension of their becoming perhaps too solemn. "Well, you immensely interest me, and you really couldn't have chosen a better time. A secret—for we shall make it that, of course, sha'n't we?—at this witching hour, in this great old house, is all that my visit here will have required to make the whole thing a rare remembrance. So, I assure you, the more you put before me the better."
Mr. Longdon took up another ash-tray, but with the air of doing so as a direct consequence of Vanderbank's tone. After he had laid it down, he put on his glasses; then, fixing his companion, he brought out: "Have you no idea at all—?"
"Of what you have in your head? Dear Mr. Longdon, how should I have?"
216
