Robert remained silent a short time, then, averting his eyes from her questioning gaze, said:
"This is my birthday."
"You don't suppose that I could forget it? But certainly you do not wish to be congratulated upon it, to have it mentioned?"
Robert laid his hand upon her lips, murmuring:
"Yet I cannot forget your thinking of it, as I see."
A pause ensued, and he had the unpleasant feeling that his ostrich method of shunning the sight of a disagreeable fact, must appear very ridiculous.
"Well, and why does your birthday make you melancholy?" asked Else, kissing his hand as she removed it from her mouth.
"A woman ought to feel that, without any explanation from me."
"It isn't the same thing, dear Robert. But I don't philosophize about the distinction. At any rate a woman dreads her birthday only because she is afraid of growing old, and there can be no question of that with you. At your age a man is not old."
She smiled so strangely, as she said this. Or did it merely seem so to
Robert?