"She's prodigious for that.But can it be so great?""Isn't it easy to count?" he asked."Don't you remember, when poor Briss married her, how immensely she was older? What was it they called it?--a case of child-stealing.Everyone made jokes.Briss isn't yet thirty." No, I bethought myself, he wouldn't be; but I hadn't remembered the difference as so great.What I had mainly remembered was that she had been rather ugly.At present she was rather handsome.Long, however, as to this, didn't agree."I'm bound to say I don't quite call it beauty.""Oh, I only speak of it as relative.She looks so well and somehow so 'fine.' Why else shouldn't we have recognised her?""Why indeed? But it isn't a thing with which beauty has to do." He had made the matter out with an acuteness for which I shouldn't have given him credit."What has happened to her is simply that--well, that nothing has.""Nothing has happened? But, my dear man, she has been married.That's supposed to be something.""Yes, but she has been married so little and so stupidly.It must be desperately dull to be married to poor Briss.His comparative youth doesn't, after all, make more of him.He's nothing but what he is.Her clock has simply stopped.She looks no older--that's all.""Ah, and a jolly good thing too, when you start where she did.But Itake your discrimination," I added, "as just.The only thing is that if a woman doesn't grow older she may be said to grow younger; and if she grows younger she may be supposed to grow prettier.That's all except, of course, that it strikes me as charming also for Brissenden himself.
HE had the face, I seem to recall, of a baby; so that if his wife did flaunt her fifty years--!""Oh," Long broke in, "it wouldn't have mattered to him if she had.That's the awfulness, don't you see? of the married state.People have to get used to each other's charms as well as to their faults.He wouldn't have noticed.It's only you and I who do, and the charm of it is for US.""What a lucky thing then," I laughed, "that, with Brissenden so out of it and relegated to the time-table's obscure hereafter, it should be you and I who enjoy her!" I had been struck in what he said with more things than I could take up, and I think I must have looked at him, while he talked, with a slight return of my first mystification.He talked as I had never heard him--less and less like the heavy Adonis who had so often "cut" me;and while he did so I was proportionately more conscious of the change in him.He noticed in fact after a little the vague confusion of' my gaze and asked me--with complete good nature why I stared at him so hard.Isufficiently disembroiled myself to reply that I could only be fascinated by the way he made his points; to which he--with the same sociability--made answer that he, on the contrary, more than suspected me, clever and critical as I was of amusement at his artless prattle.He stuck none the less to his idea that what we had been discussing was lost on Brissenden."Ah, then I hope," I said, "that at least Lady John isn't!""Oh, Lady John--!" And he turned away as if there were either too much or too little to say about her.
I found myself engaged again with Mrs.Briss while he was occupied with a newspaper-boy--and engaged, oddly, in very much the free view of him that he and I had just taken of herself.She put it to me frankly that she had never seen a man so improved: a confidence that I met with alacrity, as it showed me that, under the same impression, I had not been astray.
She had only, it seemed, on seeing him, made him out with a great effort.
I took in this confession, but I repaid it."He hinted to me that he had not known you more easily.""More easily than you did? Oh, nobody does that; and, to be quite honest, I've got used to it and don't mind.People talk of our changing every seven years, but they make me feel as if I changed every seven minutes.What will you have, at any rate, and how can I help it? It's the grind of life, the wear and tear of time and misfortune.And, you know, I'm ninety-three.""How young you must feel," I answered, "to care to talk of your age!