“You know not what you do,” he cried out, and his voice was as the voice of one in pain. “I am old.”
“Old?” she echoed in deep surprise, and she looked up at him, as if she sought evidence of what he stated.
“Aye, old,” he assured her bitterly. “Look at the grey in my hair, the wrinkles in my face. I am no likely lover for you, child. You’ll need a lusty, comely young gallant.”
She looked at him, and a faint smile flickered at the corners of her lips. She observed his straight, handsome figure; his fine air of dignity and of strength. Every inch a man was he; never lived there one who was more a man; and what more than such a man could any maid desire?
“You are all that I would have you,” she answered him, and in his mind he almost cursed her stubbornness, her want of reason.
“I am peevish and cross-grained,” he informed her, “and I have grown old in ignorance of woman’s ways. Love has never come to me until now. What manner of lover, think you, can I make?”
Her eyes were on the windows at his back. The sunshine striking through them seemed to give her the reply she sought.
“To-morrow will be Saint Martin’s Day,” she told him; “yet see with a warmth the sun is shining.”
“A poor, make-believe Saint Martin’s Summer,” said he. “I am fitly answered by your allegory.”
“Oh, not make-believe, not make-believe,” she exclaimed. “There is no make-believe in the sun’s brightness and its warmth. We see it and we feel it, and we are none the less glad of it because the time of year should be November; rather do we take the greater joy in it. And it is not yet November in your life, not yet by many months.”