“What shall we do?” I asked. “We are beaten.”
“Yes, I’m afraid you’re beaten. The pack has won. But it’s only anticipating your fate by a few months. All parents have to lose their children, and you’ve been luckier than most. Rose is certain sure to marry, and marry young too, so you’d have lost her at twenty any way, if not before. She’s on the road to nineteen now, and you mustn’t grumble.”
“And what is there left for me?” I asked.
“You?—why that doesn’t matter, because you don’t matter. You’re a sterile old stick. Sterility has no vote. You’ll just rub along, getting through the days, till the end. You’ve had your chance and lost it.”
“You don’t give me much encouragement,” I complained.
“Why should I?” she replied. “The truth is the only thing worth having, and, in a civilized life, like ours, where so many risks are removed, facing it is almost the only courageous thing left to do. But you might marry yet?”
“Never,” I said.
“Very well then, you must rust and bear it.”
Cold comfort indeed!
If ever there were two people on this planet who might have been let alone, and wanted to be let alone, and deserved to be let alone, they were Rose and I. But it was not to be.