Such a retreat, at my time of life, was very soothing. My meridian was pretty near the full, and I had a right to a drowsy siesta before facing again the afternoon glow whose level rays would decline to the long evening. I lazily watched a fly that was spinning a soft drone in the twilighted room, and blinked through my half-closed eyes at the few white splashes of sunlight on the floor, vivid in the subdued tone. Bowls of flowers cooled the air with perfume, and the Genius of Rest brooded over the place. The afternoon with its business would come, no doubt; but for the present this was my oasis.
Mrs. Loring reappeared in a tea-gown whose gossamer frothed daintily about her neck. She looked the pink of freshness—and yet she was within three years of thirty. I took a kind of pleasure in the thought. Loring was a lucky man.
A tray was brought in, and this attentive lady fluttered round the little silver urn, and ministered to my paresse with tea and lemon. I grew humorously melancholy, and lapsed into gentle vistas of reminiscence. I believe I sighed.
Mrs. Loring mentally referred the sigh to corpulence, for she came over with tea, and said, “There, poor man. That will cool you.”
I half rose from my reclining posture, and shook my head as I took the cup.
“No, madam,” I said, “tea-leaves cannot allay the dust of memory. I sigh for what once was, for what might have been now. I sigh for Ten Years Back. Do you ever sigh for Ten Years Back?”
From the puzzled way in which she looked at me, she evidently did not.
“Ten years back,” I continued, “you and I were yet young.”
She tried to look wrinkled.
“Ten years back you were interested in painting, and visited the National Gallery. Millie Dixon was also interested in painting and also visited the National Gallery. Loring Chatterton didn’t give a hang for painting, yet he dragged me round to the National Gallery. I paid the sixpences.”