“But how do you know it was a present?”
“Such things always are—people don’t buy them for themselves.”
She had now relinquished the object, laying it upon the bench, and Vanderbank took it up. “Its origin’s lost in the night of time—it has no history except that I’ve used it. But I assure you that I do want to give you something. I’ve never given you anything.”
She was silent a little. “The exhibition you’re making,” she seriously sighed at last, “of your inconstancy and superficiality! All the relics of you that I’ve treasured and that I supposed at the time to have meant something!”
“The ‘relics’? Have you a lock of my hair?” Then as her meaning came to him: “Oh little Christmas things? Have you really kept them?”
“Laid away in a drawer of their own—done up in pink paper.”
“I know what you’re coming to,” Vanderbank said. “You’ve given ME things, and you’re trying to convict me of having lost the sweet sense of them. But you can’t do it. Where my heart’s concerned I’m a walking reliquary. Pink paper? I use gold paper—and the finest of all, the gold paper of the mind.” He gave a flip with a fingernail to his cigarette and looked at its quickened fire; after which he pursued very familiarly, but with a kindness that of itself qualified the mere humour of the thing: “Don’t talk, my dear child, as if you didn’t really know me for the best friend you have in the world.” As soon as he had spoken he pulled out his watch, so that if his words had led to something of a pause this movement offered a pretext for breaking it. Nanda asked the hour and, on his replying “Five-fifteen,” remarked that there would now be tea on the terrace with every one gathered at it. “Then shall we go and join them?” her companion demanded.
He had made, however, no other motion, and when after hesitating she said “Yes, with pleasure” it was also without a change of position. “I like this,” she inconsequently added.
“So do I awfully. Tea on the terrace,” Vanderbank went on, “isn’t ‘in’ it. But who’s here?”
“Oh every one. All your set.”