Sybert lit a cigarette and followed her. ‘Well?’ he asked, as they paused by the terrace balustrade. ‘Does it meet with your approval?’
‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’ she replied as she looked back at the broad, white façade with its gleaming windows. There was no moon, but a clear, star-sprinkled sky. In all the dark landscape the villa alone was a throbbing centre of life and light. Rows of coloured lanterns were beginning to outline the avenue leading to the gate, and in the ilex grove tiny red and blue and white bulbs glowed among the branches like the blossoms of some tropical night-blooming cereus. Servants were hurrying past the windows, musicians were commencing to tune their instruments; everywhere was the excitement of preparation.
‘And this is your birthday,’ he said. ‘I suppose you have received many pretty speeches to-day, Miss Marcia; I hope they may all come true.’ She glanced up in his face, and he looked down with a smile. ‘Twenty-three is a great age!’
A shadow flitted across her face. ‘Isn’t it?’ she sighed. ‘I thought twenty-two was bad enough—but twenty-three! It won’t be many years before I’ll be really getting old.’
Sybert laughed. ‘It’s been a long time since I saw twenty-three—when I first came back to Rome.’
‘Twelve years,’ said Marcia.
‘It’s an easy enough problem if you care to work it out. I don’t care to, any more.’
‘It’s not bad for a man,’ she said; ‘but a woman grows old so young!’
‘You need not worry over that just now. The grey hairs will not come for some time yet.’
‘I’m not worrying,’ she laughed. ‘I was just thinking—it isn’t nice to grow old, is it?’