THE AWKWARD AGE
me when I hear you speak of the growing up, in turn, of that person's own daughter."
"I follow you with a sympathy!" Vanderbank replied. "The situation's reproduced."
"Ah, partly—not altogether. The things that are unlike—well, are so very unlike." Mr. Longdon, for a moment, on this, fixed his companion with eyes that betrayed one of the restless little jumps of his mind. "I told you just now that there's something I seem to make out in you."
"Yes, that was meant for better things?"—Vanderbank gaily took him up. "There is something, I really believe—meant for ever so much better ones. Those are just the sort I like to be supposed to have a real affinity with. Help me to them, Mr. Longdon; help me to them, and I don't know what I won't do for you!"
"Then, after all"—and the old man made his point with innocent sharpness—"you're not past saving!"
"Well, I individually—how shall I put it to you? If I tell you," Vanderbank went on, "that I've that sort of fulcrum for salvation which consists at least in a deep consciousness and the absence of a rag of illusion, I shall appear to say that I'm different from the world I live in and to that extent present myself as superior and fatuous. Try me, at any rate. Let me try myself. Don't abandon me. See what can be done with me. Perhaps I'm after all a case. I shall at any rate cling to you."
"You're too clever—you're too clever: that's what's the matter with you all!" Mr. Longdon sighed.
"With us all?" Vanderbank echoed. "Dear Mr. Longdon, it's the first time I've heard it. If you should say with me in particular, why there might be something in it. What you mean, at any rate—I see where you come out—is that we're cold and sarcastic and cynical, without the soft human spot. I think you flatter us even while you attempt to warn; but what's extremely inter-
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