By a curious coincidence Philander was stating the same opinion half a mile down the hill. Indeed Lydia’s face seemed a palimpsest to Mr. Knox, and through more recent writings, to her countenance there would still come a twinkle from the past and a flash and flush, that penetrated thirty years of Time’s caligraphy and seemed to recreate her features, even to a little curl at the corner of her under-lip, that belonged to youth and had been delicious then.
Mr. Knox perceived these things.
“Dammy, you’re growing younger under my very eyes, Lydia,” he said.
She laughed.
“Tom didn’t think so,” she answered. “He said that for an aged woman—”
“Get him out of your mind,” said Mr. Knox. “The forties are often very unmerciful to the fifties—a trick of human nature I can’t explain.”
“I know I’m younger; and it’s largely along of you, Philander, but not all. You can understand how the thought of them two up there have made me younger. I never dreamed they could come together again—not in my most hopeful moments.”
“That’s because you didn’t know how short a distance they’d really fallen apart.”
“’Tis too good to be true. I’m frightened of it.”
“Not you,” he said. “You never was frightened of anything and never will be.”