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290 him anything that counted in hers, but rather the contrary. He had tried to get through this re- serve of hers, had tried to make her talk about herself, with an interest so marked that it defeated its own end. She asked herself why he should be so much interested, why he should have for her that grave, impersonal tenderness, unaccounted for by anything that she knew. It made her at times uncomfortable; yet on the whole she had a sense of freedom, of confidence, with him, that made his companionship a deep pleasure.

"Unusual experience?" he said musingly, echoing her last words. "No—not that, I think. The ordinary experience—youth and its dreams and ambitions—and middle-age and its acquiescence."

"Middle-age! You are young."

"I'm thirty-six. It isn't altogether a matter of years."

"What is it, then?" "It's just that—acquiescence. Youth is the feeling of the infinite beyond the horizon of our own infinite possibilities the feeling that we may do anything, get anything we want. …" "Yes, it is that. But, then?"

"Then we explore our possibilities and find their limits, and the world shrinks, and we see the stone wall instead of the horizon. And we do not beat our brains out against it. We acquiesce."