“Not particularly—till some one threw me a rose.”
Ann decided to ignore the latter part of this speech.
“You’re such a confirmed cynic that I wonder you condescended to take part in anything go frivolous as the fête,” she observed.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“When in Rome—Besides, it reminded me of my young days.”
“You talk as if you were a close relation of Methuselah. You’re not so very old.”
“Am I not?” He paused a moment. “Old enough, at any rate, to have lost all my illusions.”
There was an undercurrent so bitter in the curtly uttered speech that Ann’s warm young sympathies responded involuntarily.
“I wish I could bring them back for you,” she said impulsively.
Through the flickering luminance of the lights rimming the boat’s gunwale he looked at her with an odd intensity.