He bent towards her eagerly: "Do you think—" he stopped and stammered, "You know we have been planning, a few of us, to club together and get a little farm somewhere near—would you—do you think—would you be one of us?"
She laughed, a little low, sad laugh: "I wouldn't be any good, you know. I couldn't do the work that ought to be done. I would come fast enough and I would try. But I'm a little too old, Bernard. The rest are young enough to make mistakes and live to make them good; but when I would have my lesson learned, my strength would be gone. It's half gone now."
"No, it isn't," burst out the youth. "You're worth half a dozen of those young ones. Old, old—one would think you were seventy. And you're not old; you will never be old."
She looked up where a crow was wheeling in the air. "If," she said slowly, following its motions with her eyes, "you once plant your feet on my face, and you will, you impish bird—my Bernard will sing a different song."
"No, Bernard won't," retorted the youth. "Bernard knows his own mind, even if he is 'only a boy.' I don't love you for your face, you—"
She interrupted him with a shrug and a bitter sneer. "Evidently! Who would?"
A look of mingled pain and annoyance overspread his features. "How you twist my words. You are beautiful to me; and you know what I meant."
"Well," she said, throwing herself backward against a tree-trunk and stretching out her feet on the grass, ripples of amusement wavering through the cloudy expression, "tell me what do you love in me."
He was silent, biting his lower lip.
"I'll tell you then," she said. "It's my energy, the life in me. That is youth, and my youth has overlived its time. I've had a long lease, but it's going to expire soon. So long as you don't see it, so long as my life seems fuller than yours—well—; but when the failure of life becomes visible, while your own is still in its growth, you will turn away. When my feet won't spring any more, yours will still be dancing. And you will want dancing feet with you."