f
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.

"Six years ago" he said with the same drowsy thoughtfulness. "Well,
Rose, I shall always be--most grateful--for those six years."

She started to speak but he checked her.

"I think I would be willing to make a substantial endowment to any
Protestant Church that still really believed in hell," he said, "because
that was very like hell--six years ago."

Intensity began to come into his voice like a color of darkness, though
he still spoke slowly.

"You can stand nearly everything in life but being tired of yourself.
And six years ago I was tired--tired to death."

Her hand reached over and touched him medicinally.

"I suppose I had no right" he began again and then stopped. "No, I think
the strong man tires less easily but more wholly than the weak one when
he does tire. And I was strong enough.

"I'd played a big game, you know. When my father died we hadn't much
left but position--and that was going. I don't blame my father--he
wasn't a business man--he shoul