e satisfactions you too must give." His host,
with an irresistible hand, confirmed him in his position and pressed
upon him another cigarette. His resistance rang hollow--it was clearly,
he judged, such an occasion for sacrifices. Vanderbank's view of it
meanwhile was quite as marked. "You see there's ever so much more you
must in common kindness tell me."

Mr. Longdon sat there like a shy singer invited to strike up. "I told
you everything at Mrs. Brookenham's. It comes over me now how I dropped
on you."

"What you told me," Vanderbank returned, "was excellent so far as it
went; but it was only after all that, having caught my name, you had
asked of our friend if I belonged to people you had known years before,
and then, from what she had said, had--with what you were so good as to
call great pleasure--made out that I did. You came round to me on this,
after dinner, and gave me a pleasure still greater. But that only takes
us part of the way." Mr. Longdon said nothing, but there was something
appreciative in his conscious lapses; they were a tribute to his young
friend's frequent felicity. This personage indeed appeared more and more
to take them for that--which was not without its effect on his spirits.
At last, with a flight of some freedom, he brought their pause to a
close. "You loved Lady Julia." Then as the attitude of his guest, who
serenely met his eyes, was practically a contribution to the subject,
he went on with a feeling that he had positively pleased. "You lost
her--and you're unmarried."

Mr. Longdon's smile was beautiful--it supplied so many meanings that
when presently he spoke he seemed already to have told half his story.
"Well, my life took a form. It had to, or I don't know what would have
become of me, and several things that all happened at once helped me
out. My father died--I came into the little place in Suffolk. My sister,
my only one, who had married and was older than I, lost within a year or
two both her husband and her little boy. I offered her, in the country,
a home, for her trouble was greater than any trouble of mine. She came,
she stayed; it went on and on and we lived there together. We were sorry
for each other and it somehow suited us. But she died two years ago."

Vanderbank took all this in, only wishing to show--wishing by this time
quite tenderly--that he even read into it deeply enough all the unsaid.
He filled out another of his friend's gaps. "And here you are." Then he