Old Dyall was saying, "Perhaps, Megan, by the time you are old enough, our government will be wise enough to realize that beauty, of itself, deserves the greatest reward Man can give." He turned to Emrys. "Forgive me for getting so sentimental, but Megan looks as uncannily like her great-great-grandmother—my wife—as ... you look like your father. I can't bear to think she must die, too. It's a pity there is no way she can stay young and beautiful for all time."
Emrys found his fists clenching. The fingers were cold.
"Alissa's portrait was painted just before I married her," the old man said. "She was just about Megan's age then. Come, I'd like you to see it."
No! something inside Emrys cried out, but he could not courteously—or any other way—refuse to follow the old man.
They went into another room. Hanging over the mantelpiece was the painting of a girl in old-fashioned clothes. Anyone, not knowing, would have taken her to be Megan. But Emrys knew she was not, and suddenly he let himself remember what it was that Megan meant to him ... and why he hated Nicholas Dyall with such coruscating fury.
IV
"You should have sent for me to come to you, Mr. Hubbard," Nicholas Dyall said, with a gentle pity that infuriated the old lawyer, who knew that he himself was young enough to be Dyall's grandson. Hubbard was jealous—he would not conceal it from himself—bitterly jealous. It had not been hard for him to rationalize Jan Shortmire's gift of years as a worthless one; that old man's bitterness and disillusionment had not inspired envy. But this hale and rosy old man seemed to be enjoying his years.
I may not have made any signal contribution to human welfare, Hubbard thought resentfully, but I have done my best. Why must I die at an age fifty years short of the age which this man is allowed to reach?
"I am perfectly able to get about, Mr. Dyall," he said in icy tones, "since I am in excellent health."