“Very well, and double for the Rubicon.”
“How do you mean?” said the young man, puzzled.
“You will see,” said the old man, and they began to play.
The game was singularly absorbing. At first the young man won a few pounds; then he lost rather heavily, then he won again, but not quite enough to recoup. Then in the fourth game he won, so that he was a little ahead, and meanwhile the old man chatted merrily during the discarding or the shuffling: during the shuffling especially. He looked out towards the downs with something of a sigh at one moment, and said:
“It’s a happy world.”
“Yes,” answered the younger man with the proper lugubriousness of youth, “but it all comes to an end.”
“It isn’t its coming to an end,” said the elder man, declaring a point of six, “that’s not the tragedy; it’s the little bits coming to an end meanwhile, before the whole comes to an end: that’s the tragedy....” But he added with another of his jolly laughs: “We must play. Piquet takes up all one’s grey matter.”
They played and the young man lost again, but by a very narrow margin: it was quite an absorbing game. As they shuffled again the young man said:
“What did you mean by the little bits stopping, or whatever it was?”
“Oh,” said the old man as though he couldn’t remember, and then he added: “Oh, yes, I mean you’ll find, as you grow older, people die and affections change, and, though it seems silly to mention it in company with higher things, there’s what Shelley called the ‘contagion of the world’s slow stain.’”