“You are very old,” she said inscrutably. “I did not realize.”
“Also I have not forgotten what you did to me when I was thirty-five. You shook me with that traffic tie-up. It was a magnificent effort. The beauty and power you radiated! You became personified even to my wife, and she feared you. For weeks I wanted to slip out of the house at dark and forget the stuffiness of life with music and cocktails and a girl to make me young. But then—I no longer knew how.”
“And now you are so very old.”
With a sort of awe she moved back and away from him.
“Yes, leave me!” he cried. “You are old also; the spirit withers with the skin. Have you come here only to tell me something I had best forget: that to be old and poor is perhaps more wretched than to be old and rich; to remind me that my son hurls my gray failure in my face?”
“Give me my book,” she commanded harshly. “Be quick, old man!”
Merlin looked at her once more and then patiently obeyed. He picked up the book and handed it to her, shaking his head when she offered him a bill.
“Why go through the farce of paying me? Once you made me wreck these very premises.”
“I did,” she said in anger, “and I’m glad. Perhaps there had been enough done to ruin me.”
She gave him a glance, half disdain, half ill-concealed uneasiness, and with a brisk word to her urban grandson moved toward the door.