“It is a study in indiscretion, my child,” he replied enigmatically.
“You are perfectly horrid.”
“I suppose I am,” he admitted, looking at the portrait with some wistfulness. “Ugly as sin, and with as much manners as a kangaroo =—does your feminine wisdom think a woman could ever fall in love with me?”
She touched caressingly the top of his head where the hair was thinning, and her feminine wisdom made this astounding answer:
“Why, you are too old, Jimmie dear.”
Too old! He turned and regarded her for a moment in rueful wonder. Absurd though it was, the statement gave him a shock. He was barely forty, and here was this full-grown, demure, smiling young woman telling him he was too old for any of her sex to trouble their heads about him. His forlorn aspect brought a rush of colour to the girl's cheeks. She put her arms round his neck.
“Oh, Jimmie, I have hurt you. I'm sorry. I'm a silly little goose. It's a wonder that every woman on earth is n't in love with you.”
“That is the tone of exaggerated affection, but not of conviction,” he said. “I am the masculine of what in a woman is termed passée. I might gain the esteem of a person of the opposite sex elderly like myself, but my gallant exterior can no longer inspire a romantic passion. My day is over. No, you have not hurt me. The sword of truth pierces, but it does not hurt.”
Then he broke into his good, sunny laughter, and rose and put his arm with rough tenderness round her shoulder, as he had done ever since she could walk.
“You are the youngest thing I have come across for a long time.”