"When is that?"
"When it's too late."
"Isn't that pessimistic?"
"No--I'm only speaking of Time. Time's nothing--Time doesn't count. You may count it--you generally do with a mechanical contrivance called a clock--but it doesn't count itself. As the community looks at these things it may be too late, but it's not too late to make all the difference in life. The point is meeting her, knowing her. Nothing else really matters. Once you know her, she is as much in your life as ever marriage and all such little conventional ceremonies as that can make her."
She looked up at him again.
"What strange ideas you have."
"Are they?"
"They are to me. Then your father didn't meet your mother too late? How soon did he meet her after--after he went away?"
"Two years or so."
"Oh--he was quite old, then?"