'At this very moment the air is drenched with ghosts. Ghosts of days to come—lean and gray, when youth is left far behind—when those that look out at the window are darkened, and the daughters of music are laid low.'
'It is good of you not to speak like Ivan,' said Langdale gravely. 'He said once that the great melancholy steppes of his native land had got into his disposition. I think the vast solitudes of your Australia have got into yours.'
'But do you never think how dreadful it is to grow old? And it goes on all the time. Why, since we have been here, if your eyes were keen enough, you would see wrinkles deepening on my face.'
'Thank Heaven my eyes are not so precocious!'
'Ah, now you have betrayed yourself. You are not so hopelessly reasonable after all. I may yet hear you rail at life in good set terms.'
'But don't you think it is time enough to speak of wrinkles when they come?'
'Ah, but they have come. I discovered a little sly wretch of a crow's-foot at the corner of my eye the other day. Look there when I stand sideways in the light,' and Stella stood so that her crow's-foot might be more clearly seen.
Langdale could not resist laughing. 'My eyesight is not sharp enough, or else your crow's-foot does not exist,' he said.
'Spoken like a courtier. But it would be more friendly to see it, and then to say something out of Seneca to comfort me. When will your profession make some real advance?'
'And invent an elixir for renewing youth—or perhaps you are thinking more of the happy despatch of superfluous beings?'