"It's grey, you know," he ended.
"As if it mattered," said Mrs. Severance, a little pettishly.
"It does matter, Rose." His eyes darkened with memory--with the sort of
memory that hurts more to forget than even to remember. "Do you realize
that I am sixteen years older than you are?" he said a little hurriedly as
if he were trying to scribble the memory over with any kind of words.
"But my dear" and she smiled, "you were sixteen years older six years ago
--remember? There's less real difference between us now than there was
then."
"Yes, I certainly wasn't as young in some ways--six years ago." He seemed
to speak almost as if unconsciously, almost as if the words were being
squeezed out of him in sleep by a thing that had pressed for a long time
with a steady weight on his mind till the mind must release itself or be
broken. "But then nobody could be with you, for a month even, and not feel
himself turn younger whether he wanted to or not." "So that's settled."
She was trying to carry it lightly, to take the darkness out of his eyes.
"And once you've bought our steamer tickets we can leave it all behind at
the wharf and by the time we land we'll be so disgracefully young that no
one will recognize us--just think--we can keep going back and back till
I'm putting my hair up for the first time and you're in little short
trousers--and then babies, I suppose and the other side of getting born--"
but her voice, for once, turned ineffectually against his centeredness of
gaze, that seemed now as if it had turned back on itself for a struggling
moment and regarded neither what was nor what might be, but only what was
past.
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