"Nonsense! Ages before that, my hair will be growing grey all over."
"It's quite grey now; absolutely white in the moonlight—silver! And it looks top-hole," he assured her, laughing down at her. "Why, you look wonderful. You always do. You can't talk about the usual sort of women getting old, and pretend you're going to be like that, because you aren't. How could you ever be? You're different."
"Only to you," she sighed, "and only for the moment."
"Moment! I swear I shouldn't ever alter——"
"No? Let's turn." They retraced on the sands the lines of their own footprints; his boot-marks making a contrast with the slim, light prints of the woman's shoes.
"What have you got on your feet?" he asked her presently, almost roughly, stopping to look down. "I never saw anything like the things women go out in. Haven't you got any sensible boots?... You aren't fit to take care of yourself, as a matter of fact. You've got to let me take care of you."
"My dear boy," she smiled, shaking the head on which the moonlight was spinning those prophetic webs of silver, "all nice men at your age begin to feel that need of taking care of something. A young girl, that's what you ought to be seeing to the shoes of, and looking for wraps for, and all that. Not me, not me. A young girl."
"What young girl?" he demanded mutinously.
Mrs. Cartwright was silent as they passed into the darkness under the wooden jetty. Out into the light again they came, and up the beach, back, in the direction of the hotel piazza, and of the old cannon that stood on its stone plinth at the foot of the stone steps. They reached the cannon, and still she had not spoken.
She was thinking, hard.