"You 're—you 're too young," Anthony reminded him.
"Too young?" mildly demurred Adrian, wide-eyed. "I 'm thirty, if I 'm a day."
"You 're thirty-nine, if you 're a day," said Anthony. "But you 'll never be thirty—not even when you 're forty. You breathe perennial spring."
"I confess," said Adrian, with deliberation, "I freely confess that I am not an effete and blasé old thing, like—like one who shall be nameless. There is a variety of fruit (the husbandman's despair), a tough, cross-grained, sour-hearted variety of fruit, that dries up and shrivels, and never ripens. There is another variety of fruit that grows rounder and rosier, tenderer and juicier and sweeter, the longer it hangs on the tree. Time cannot wither it. The child of the sun and the zephyr, it is honey-full and fragrant even unto its inmost ripe red core."
He expanded his chest, and significantly thumped it.
"Mark you," he resumed, "I name no names. The soul of delicacy and discretion, as of modesty and kindness, I name no names. But as for myself, that I am young I acknowledge. Those whom the gods love are ever young. Yet I am old enough, at least, to be capable of fresh, impulsive feelings. I am old enough to have cast the crude, harsh pessimism of inexperience. I am old enough to have outlived my disillusions. I am old enough to have learned that the good things of life are good, and to understand that the rose-buds in the garden are there to be gathered. And I 'm not such a silly as to forbear to gather them. I think I shall make Madame Torrebianca the object of my respectful solicitations."
Anthony fixed eyes of derision on him.
"Oh, the fatuity of the man!" he jeered. "If you could see yourself.
You 're sandy-haired—and miles too fat."
"I beg your pardon," said Adrian, with dignity. "My hair is of a very fashionable shade—tawny, which indicates a passionate heart, with under-waves of gold, as if the sunshine had got entangled in it. I will not dwell upon its pretty truant tendency to curl. And as for what you call fat—let me tell you that there are people who admire a rich, ample figure in a man. I admit, I am not a mere anatomy, I am not a mere hungry, lean-faced, lantern-jawed, hollow-eyed, sallow-cheeked, vulture-beaked, over-dressed exiguity, like—well, mark you, I name no names. I need not allude to my other and higher attributes—my wit, my sympathy, my charming affectations, my underlying strength of character (a lion clothed in rose-leaves—what?), my genius for the divinest of the arts. I think I shall lay myself at the feet of Donna Susanna. The rest of the sex"—his gesture put them from him—"may coif St. Catherine."
"I have n't the honour of knowing the lady in question," said Anthony, with detachment. "But if she is anything like the paragon you have led me to expect, let me, as your sincere well-wisher, let me warn you not to cherish hopes that are foredoomed to disappointment. If, on the other hand, she should indeed admire your style of rich, ample figure, I shall deem it my duty to save you from her—at no matter what cost to myself. I cannot allow you to link yourself for life to a woman without taste."