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He could only acquiesce. At the door the old lady turned.

“If you think I look so old as to make your marriage too absurd,” she said—and now, for the first time, her voice trembled—“I could dye my hair.”

“Oh no,” Michael said, “your hair is beautiful. Good-bye, and thank you.”

As the old lady went down the dusty Temple stairs she stamped a small foot angrily on the worn oak.

“Fool!” she said, “how could you? Hateful, shameless, unwomanly! And it’s all for nothing, too. He’ll never do it. It’s too mad!”

Michael went straight to Sylvia, and told his tale.

“And I felt I couldn’t,” he said; “she is the daintiest, sweetest little old lady. I couldn’t marry her and see her every day and live in the hope of her death.”

“I don’t see why not,” Sylvia said, a little coldly. “She wouldn’t die any sooner because you married her, and, anyway, she can’t have long to live.”

The words were almost those of the little old lady herself. Yet—or perhaps for that very reason—they jarred on Michael’s mood.