“I have never been young,” he answered, eating his devilled kidney with a silent pathos of perseverance—“never.”
“And I shall never be old, or, at any rate, feel old. It can't be done. I'm sixty-four, and look it, but I can't cease to revel in details, take an interest in people, and regard life as my half-opened oyster. It is a pity one can't go on living till one is two or three hundred or so. There is so much to see and know. Our existence in the world is like a day at the Stores. We have to go away before we have been into a quarter of the different departments.”
“I don't find life at all like that. I have seen all the departments till I am sick of them. But perhaps you never come to London?”
“Every year for three months to see my friends. I stay at an hotel. It is a most delightful time.”
Her tone was warm with pleasant memories. Claude felt himself more and more surprised.
“You enjoy the country, and London?” he said.
“I enjoy everything,” said Miss Haddon. “And surely most people do.”
“None of the people I know seem to enjoy anything very much. They try everything, of course. That is one's duty.”
“Then the latest literature really reflects life, I imagine,” Miss Haddon said. “If what you say is true, everything includes the sins as well as the virtues. I have often wondered whether the books that I have thought utterly and absurdly false could possibly be the outcome of facts.”
“Such as what books?”