Page:Middle Aged Love Stories (IA middleagedlove00bacorich).djvu/166



"And a cup of tea with your lunch—don't forget, monsieur!" she called after him as he walked off—she hated to realize how slowly, nowadays. They were good friends, these two, and they knew it well: if she came back and he was not there—her heart contracted and seemed to wait while she caught her breath and shook the thought away.

"We're not so old as that," she whispered under her breath. "We're not really old, either of us!"

All day she thought about him, and to her just quickened sight much that the excitement of the past had made trivial loomed suddenly large before her. She realized how quiet he had grown of late, how seldom he essayed the jokes, the small kindly nonsense, the half-serious homage to her charm of personality that brightened her life so much—that had been, indeed, almost her only social pleasure. It occurred to her that he had been less quick of comprehension than ever before,