Even for this at first Vanderbank had no answer—none but to rise from his place, come down to the floor and, standing there, look at Mr. Longdon across the table. He was serious now, but without being solemn. “How can one tell? One can never be sure. A man may fancy, may wonder; but about a girl, a person so much younger than himself and so much more helpless, he feels a—what shall I call it?”
“A delicacy?” Mr. Longdon suggested. “It may be that; the name doesn’t matter; at all events he’s embarrassed. He wants not to be an ass on the one side and yet not some other kind of brute on the other.”
Mr. Longdon listened with consideration—with a beautiful little air indeed of being, in his all but finally benighted state, earnestly open to information on such points from a magnificent young man. “He doesn’t want, you mean, to be a coxcomb?—and he doesn’t want to be cruel?”
Vanderbank, visibly preoccupied, produced a faint kind smile. “Oh you KNOW!”
“I? I should know less than any one.” Mr. Longdon had turned away from the table on this, and the eyes of his companion, who after an instant had caught his meaning, watched him move along the room and approach another part of the divan. The consequence of the passage was that Vanderbank’s only rejoinder was presently to say: “I can’t tell you how long I’ve imagined—have asked myself. She’s so charming, so interesting, and I feel as if I had known her always. I’ve thought of one thing and another to do—and then, on purpose, haven’t thought at all. That has mostly seemed to me best.”
“Then I gather,” said Mr. Longdon, “that your interest in her—?”
“Hasn’t the same character as her interest in ME?” Vanderbank had taken him up responsively, but after speaking looked about for a match and lighted a new cigarette. “I’m sure you understand,” he broke out, “what an extreme effort it is to me to talk of such things!”
“Yes, yes. But it’s just effort only? It gives you no pleasure? I mean the fact of her condition,” Mr. Longdon explained.
Vanderbank had really to think a little. “However much it might give me I should probably not be a fellow to gush. I’m a self-conscious stick of a Briton.”
“But even a stick of a Briton—!” Mr. Longdon faltered and hovered. “I’ve gushed in short to YOU.”