“His hair turns grey,” I got in.
“Yes! Now tell me about your grey hair. I am sure you have some beautiful explanation to offer, some picturesque excuse, some vindicatory fancy.”
“Suppose I were to say that I grew it grey to please a girl who thought she would like it so?”
“I should believe you—for I never knew a man who would do so much for a woman as you!” answered the Sphinx, laughing. “And did—or rather does—she like it?”
“No,” I answered sadly, “she thought she would, but she doesn’t. She wants it brown again, but it is too late.”
“It will always be brown for me,” said the Sphinx.
Sentiment threatened us a moment, but the April cloud passed without falling.
“Tell me another reason,” asked the Sphinx, “you have plenty more I am sure.”
“To tell the truth there are several explanations,” I continued gravely. “I hardly know which to choose. The scientific one is probably this: Nature is beginning to retrench. She cannot afford any longer to keep up so expensive a house of life. Her bank account of vitality is no longer what it was. Time was when she poured her blood through one’s veins like a spendthrift, and kept up ever so fine and flashing a style. One’s members lived like princes in their pride, and there was colour and dash for all and to spare. But now nature feels that she can no longer afford this prodigality—she feels, as I said, the need of retrenchment. So, looking about the house of life, she says to herself: ‘Here I can spare a little,’ and ‘We can dispense with this,’ and ‘We can no longer afford that.’ Then, coming to the hair, she says sorrowfully: ‘This brown colour is very expensive, I can no longer afford it. We must be content with grey.’ Soon she will find the eyes too expensive to keep up in their present brightness, and the ears will have to be content with a reduced supply of sound....”
“For Heaven’s sake, stop,” said the Sphinx. “You give one the creeps. You are as bad as ‘Everyman,’ or ‘Holbein’s Dance of Death.’”