“Then you know also the distinguished exception I make of you. There isn’t another man with whom I’d talk of it.”
“And even to me you don’t! But I’m none the less obliged to you,” Mr. Longdon added.
“It isn’t only the gravity,” his companion went on; “it’s the ridicule that inevitably attaches—!”
The manner in which Mr. Longdon indicated the empty room was in itself an interruption. “Don’t I sufficiently spare you?”
“Thank you, thank you,” said Vanderbank.
“Besides, it’s not for nothing.”
“Of course not!” the young man returned, though with a look of noting the next moment a certain awkwardness in his concurrence. “But don’t spare me now.”
“I don’t mean to.” Mr. Longdon had his back to the table again, on which he rested with each hand on the rim. “I don’t mean to,” he repeated.
His victim gave a laugh that betrayed at least the drop of a tension. “Yet I don’t quite see what you can do to me.”
“It’s just what for some time past I’ve been trying to think.”