"Do you remember the infinitely little to which distance is reduced in that fable of Achilles and the tortoise?" asked Vincenti; "and how by descending to infinitesimals the logician gives the idea of progress, and thus establishes a paradox? My progress has been infinitely little; but yes, I think there has been something gained since we parted."
The sigh with which his sentence closed was not indicative of triumph. The finely cut features were drawn with thought and care; the skin, originally a pale olive, was withered and yellow, and had a semitransparent look, like old parchment. Death could hardly be more wan and wasted than life appeared in this searcher into the dark mysteries of man and Nature.
"You have been absent longer than usual," said the old man, "or at least it seems to me that it has been so. I may be mistaken, for I keep no actual count of time—except this bare record of years."
He turned to a flyleaf in a black-letter volume at his right hand; and on that, beginning in ink that had grown brown and pale with time, there appeared a calendar of years, and opposite each the name of a place.
This was the only record of the philosopher's existence. Lavendale's keen eye noted that it began early in the previous century, and that the handwriting was uniform throughout, though the colour of the ink varied. Could this man, whom he had guessed at about seventy years old, have really seen the beginning of the last century? Vincenti had been ever curiously reticent about his past life—had told his patron only one fact in his history, namely, that he was by birth and parentage a Venetian.
"No, my dear friend, you are not mistaken; I stayed longer in town than I intended when I left you. People seemed glad to see me—mere seeming, of course, since in that selfish town of ours there is not a mortal who cares a snap of the fingers for any other mortal; except lovers, and theirs is but a transient semi-selfish liking. But there is a fascination in crowds; and I saw a woman who has quite forgotten me, but whom I never can forget."
"How do you know she has forgotten you?"
"By her indifference."
"Assumed as likely as not. There is no such hypocrisy as a woman's. There are liars and traitors among men, I grant you, but with them falsehood is an acquired art. In a woman deceit is innate: a part of her very being. She will smile at you and lie to you with the virginal sweetness of sixteen as cleverly as with the wrinkled craftiness of sixty. Never believe in a woman's affectation of indifference. It is the safest mask for passion. They all wear it."
"If I thought that it were so: if I thought Judith Topsparkle still loved me—"