"Nonsense! I know what it is to feel like an old man, and I know what it is to feel like a young man, and I—I felt like neither."
"When a man has lived a certain number of years," Hubbard said, knowing that envy gave the truth relish, "he is an old man. Age is in the mind and heart, not only in the body."
"That's a lie!" Then Emrys said, more calmly, "If that's so, why did everything change when I met Megan? Because I found then that my emotions had not been lost! I had a feeling for her that I'd never had for another woman—not even for Alissa, I think. I hadn't imagined there could be a woman like Megan in the world, so sweet and amiable and completely feminine." He looked angrily at Hubbard. "You think I'm sentimental, don't you?"
Hubbard tried to smile. "There's nothing wrong with sentiment." But sentimentality was characteristic of an old man's love.
Emrys laughed and hugged his knees. He was overdoing the ingenuousness. Of course he deliberately played the part of a boy young enough to be his own great-great-grandson, because he was wooing a woman young enough to be his own great-great-granddaughter. And Hubbard remembered how he himself had attempted to move briskly before Nicholas Dyall. Emrys Shortmire would not have the physical aches that he'd had as a result, but could there be psychical aches? Could an old man ever actually be young?
Emrys' face grew sober. "I've never touched her, Peter—really touched her, I mean. She's not like other women, you know."
"I know," Hubbard said, remembering back to the time when he, too, had been in love. Only the memory was not tender in him, because he had married the girl and lived with her for nearly seventy years.
"Peter, you aren't listening!"
"I'm sorry," the old man said, waking from his reverie. "What were you saying?"