Well, I failed.
That is all there is about it--I failed. No party claims me. I haven't
even a seat in the House of Commons. I am nearly fifty years old and I
am tired."
"Nearly fifty years old!" she repeated. "But what is that? You
have--health, you are strong and well, there is nothing a younger man
can do that you cannot. Why do you worry about your age?"
"Perhaps," he admitted, with a faint smile, and an innate compulsion to
tell her of the thought which had lurked behind, "because you are so
marvelously young."
"Absurd!" she scoffed. "I am twenty-nine years old--practically thirty.
That is to say, with the usual twenty years' allowance, you and I are of
the same age."
He looked across at her, across the lace-draped table with its bowls of
fruit, its richly-cut decanter of wine, its low bowl of roses, its haze
of cigarette smoke. She was leaning back in her chair, her head resting
upon the fingers of one hand. Her face seemed alive with so many
emotions. She was so anxious to console, so interested in her
companion, herself, and the moment.
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