to
complain of, with the folks that live in this house," he said, "any more
than with any of the rest of it."

The other nodded. "Yes, it's a very good room," he agreed. After a
longer inspection, he added with a slight accent of surprise, "An oddly
good room; stunning! Look at the color in those curtains and the walls,
and the arrangement of those prints over that Chippendale sewing-table.
I wonder if it's accidental. You wouldn't think you'd find anybody up
here who could achieve it consciously."

He got to his feet with a vigorous precision of movement which the other
admired. "Well, he's grown to be considerable of a man," he thought to
himself. "A pity his father couldn't have lived to see it, all that
aliveness that had bothered them so much, down at last where he's got
his grip on it. And enough of it, plenty of it, oceans of it, left so
that he is still about forty times more alive than anybody else." He
looked tolerantly with his tired elderly amusement at the other,
stepping about, surveying the room and every object in it.

The younger brought himself up short in front of a framed photograph.
"Why, here's a chateau-fort I don't know!" he said with an abrupt
accent. He added, with some vehemence, "I never even heard of it, I'm
sure. And it's authentic, evidently."

The older man sat perfectly still. He did not know what a shatto four
was, nor had he the slightest desire to ask and bring the information
down on him, given as the other would give it, pressingly, vividly, so
that you had to listen whether you wanted to or not. Heaven knew he did
not want to know about whatever it was, this time. Not about that, nor
anything else. He only wanted to rest and have a little life before it
was too late. It was already too late for any but the quietest sort. But
that was no matter. He wouldn't have liked the other kind very well
probably. He certainly had detested the sort of "life" he'd experienced
in business. The quietest sort was what he had always wanted and never
got. And now it really seemed as though he was going to have it. For all
his fatigued pose in the old arm-chair, his heart beat faster at the
idea. He hadn't got used to being free yet. He'd heard people say that
when you were first married it was like that, you couldn't realize it.
He'd heard one of the men at the office say that for a long time, every
time he heard his bride's skirts rustle, he had to turn his head to make
sure she was really there