Old Jolyon looked round at her. Was she chaffing him? No, her eyes were soft as velvet. Was she flattering him? But if so, why? There was nothing to be had out of an old chap like him.
“Phil thought so. He used to say: 'But I can never tell him that I admire him.'.rdquo;
Ah! There it was again. Her dead lover; her desire to talk of him! And he pressed her arm, half resentful of those memories, half grateful, as if he recognised what a link they were between herself and him.
“He was a very talented young fellow,” he murmured. “It's hot; I feel the heat nowadays. Let's sit down.”
They took two chairs beneath a chestnut tree whose broad leaves covered them from the peaceful glory of the afternoon. A pleasure to sit there and watch her, and feel that she liked to be with him. And the wish to increase that liking, if he could, made him go on:
“I expect he showed you a side of him I never saw. He'd be at his best with you. His ideas of art were a little new—to me “—he had stiffed the word 'fangled.'
“Yes: but he used to say you had a real sense of beauty.” Old Jolyon thought: 'The devil he did!' but answered with a twinkle: “Well, I have, or I shouldn't be sitting here with you.” She was fascinating when she smiled with her eyes, like that!
“He thought you had one of those hearts that never grow old. Phil had real insight.”
He was not taken in by this flattery spoken out of the past, out of a longing to talk of her dead lover—not a bit; and yet it was precious to hear, because she pleased his eyes and heart which—quite true!—had never grown old. Was that because—unlike her and her dead lover, he had never loved to desperation, had always kept his balance, his sense of symmetry. Well! It had left him power, at eighty-four, to admire beauty. And he thought, 'If I were a painter or a sculptor! But I'm an old chap. Make hay while the sun shines.'
A couple with arms entwined crossed on the grass before them, at the edge of the shadow from their tree. The sunlight fell cruelly on their pale, squashed, unkempt young faces. “We're an ugly lot!” said old Jolyon suddenly. “It amazes me to see how—love triumphs over that.”