"I know, but I gather them now because later the weather becomes too hot for walking. This is the only time when it is possible even to breathe. The heat makes me faint, and I am afraid of falling ill with it."
"Mere fancy. Let me feel your pulse."
He took her hand in his, and found the pulse to be beating with such regularity that he did not trouble even to count its throbs.
"You will live to be a hundred," he said as he relinquished her wrist.
"God preserve me from that!" exclaimed she.
"Why so? Surely you would like to live a long time?"
"Yes—I should; but not for a hundred years. You see, my grandmother lived to be eighty-five, but suffered terribly. Long before she died she had a constant cough, and was also blind and deaf and crooked, and had become a burden to herself. What would be the use of a life like that?"
"You think that it is better to be young?"
"I do. And why not?"
"How is it better? Tell me that."