Something in his voice acted as a warning signal, and I tried to reduce my astonishment to less unbecoming proportions. “I don’t find that she looks much older.”
“No. Only different?” he suggested, as if there were nothing new to him in my perplexity.
“Yes—awfully different.”
“I suppose we’re all awfully different. To you, I mean—coming from so far?”
“I recognized all the rest of you,” I said, hesitating. “And she used to be the one who stood out most.”
There was a flash, a wave, a stir of something deep down in his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “That’s the difference.”
“I see it is. She—she looks worn down. Soft but blurred, like the figures in that tapestry behind her.”
He glanced at her again, as if to test the exactness of my analogy.
“Life wears everybody down,” he said.
“Yes—except those it makes more distinct. They’re the rare ones, of course; but she was rare.”