At another time:—
"... Suppose I never grow up and Elizabeth does. How is that? I wouldn't like that. How do you straighten that out?"
"I can't straighten that out."
"Then I can't straighten it out, either."
"So young—so young!" muttered the doctor. "I was pretty old!"
One warm night the doctor walked out of doors. The south wind blew softly in his face, lifting his hair.
All round the house in yard and garden and farther away in the woods and fields everything was growing. It was a night when the earth seemed given up to the festival of youth: it was the hour of youth: of its triumph in Nature.
Little aware of where his feet carried him, he was now in the garden and now in the yard. And in the garden, low down, how sturdy little things were growing: the little radishes, the young beets, the beans—those children of the earth, flawless in their descent and environment—with what unarrestable force they were growing! Afterwards in the yard he passed some beds of lilies of the valley—most delicate breath of all flowers: how fragile but how strong, how safe in their unsullied parentage, in their ample wedlock!
All about the house the steady rush of the young! And within it—as a mausoleum—the youth of all youth for him—stopped!