“You dance well, too, Mr. Odd,” she said.
“I very seldom waltz.”
“In my honor then?”
“Solely in your honor. I haven’t waltzed five times in one evening with one young woman—for ages!”
“You haven’t waltzed five times with me yet. I may wear you out!”
“What an implied reflection on my forty years! Do I seem so old to you, Hilda?”
“No; I don’t think of you as old.”
“But I think of you as young, very young, deliciously young.”
“Deliciously?” she repeated. “That is a fallacy, I think. Youth is sad; doesn’t see things in value; everything is blacker or whiter than reality, so that one is disappointed or desperate all the time.”
“And you, Hilda?”