"You are going to beg my pardon
for that some day," he said. "You are not very vain, my sweetheart;
how could I help loving you?"

"That's just what I am finding fault with," she said with a sudden
twinkle of fun in her eyes. "You have managed to keep from it so long.
But seriously, I am not the kind of a woman I should have fancied you
would care for. I am, at least I was, very weary of life; I knew too
much about it. And I am older than you."

He looked at her critically. "You were, a year ago," he answered; "I
don't know how much, two or three years--"

"Five," she said.

"Well, five; but this last year you have been growing young. The very
fact that you were tired of the old life made it less of a strain for
you to give it up. The tired look is all gone, even from your eyes,
whereas lots of gray has come into my hair. You had learned to live in
yourself and your music. My whole scheme of life was wrapped up in the
social existence of our time. In a way I lost more than you did. I
have learned a good deal this past year. Five years ago, if I had
loved you, there would have been many inequalities between us that do
not exist to-day. Now it seems to me we are as absolutely mated, as
much parts of one whole as the two halves of the brain, or the right
and left ventricles of our hearts. It is no disparagement of you or of
myself to say that no boy could appreciate you. The measure of a man's
manhood is his ability to understand the highest type of womanhood. As
to your being worldly, that's all nonsense." He stroked her hair a few
minutes in silence, and then said, half quizzically, "You might
question me, if I said it, but this is what Balzac said of women like
you: 'A woman who has received a man's education possesses a faculty
which is the most fertile in happiness for herself and her husband;
but that woman is as rare as happiness itself.'"

She looked pleased, but she did not reply, and he went on.

"Do you still doubt me? Well, then, know that I have loved you from
the very beginning, for love, when it comes, is a retroactive law of
our being. If I had loved you less, if you had seemed less a part of
me, I might have realized it sooner."

She shook her head. "I have known that I loved you for a long time,
months," she said.

"Then you ought to have known I loved you," he answered quickly.
"Don't you think it is possible to love with our souls, our
subconsciousness, and realize with our slow brains, after