“Do I employ you for your reminiscences?” she snapped. “Are you my tutor or my broker?” “Your broker,” confessed the fur-trimmed man, taken somewhat aback. “I beg your pardon. I came about that phonograph stock. I can sell for a hundred and five.” “Then do it.” “Very well. I thought I’d better--” “Go sell it. I’m talking to my grandson.” “Very well. I--” “Good-by.” “Good-by, Madame.” The fur-trimmed man made a slight bow and hurried in some confusion from the shop. “As for you,” said Caroline, turning to her grandson, “you stay just where you are and be quiet.” She turned to Merlin and included his entire length in a not unfriendly survey. Then she smiled and he found himself smiling too. In an instant they had both broken into a cracked but none the less spontaneous chuckle. She seized his arm and hurried him to the other side of the store. There they stopped, faced each other, and gave vent to another long fit of senile glee. “It’s the only way,” she gasped in a sort of triumphant malignity. “The only thing that keeps old folks like me happy is the sense that they can make other people step around. To be old and rich and have poor descendants is almost as much fun as to be young and beautiful and have ugly sisters.” “Oh, yes,” chuckled Merlin. “I know. I envy you.” She nodded, blinking. “The last time I was in here, forty years ago,” she said, “you were a young man very anxious to kick up your heels.” “I was,” he confessed. “My visit must have meant a good deal to you.” “You have all along,” he exclaimed. “I thought--I used to think at first that you were a real person--human, I mean.” She laughed. “Many men have thought me inhuman.” “But now,” continued Merlin excitedly, “I understand. Understanding is allowed to us old people--after nothing much matters. I see now that on a certain night when you danced upon a table-top you were nothing but my romantic yearning for a beautiful and perverse woman.” Her old eyes were far away, her voice no more than the echo of a forgotten dream. “How I danced that night! I remember.” “You were making an attempt at me. Olive’s arms were closing about me and you warned me to be free and keep my measure of youth and irresponsibility. But it seemed like an effect gotten up at the last moment. It came too late.” “You are very old,” she said inscrutably. “I did not realize.” “Also I have not forgotten what you did to me when I was thirty-five. You shook me with that traffic tie-up. It was a magnificent effort. The beauty and power you radiated! You became personified even to my wife, and she feared you. For weeks I wanted to slip out of the house at dark and forget the stuffiness of life with music and cocktails and a girl to make me young. But then--I no longer knew how.” “And now you are so very old.” With a sort of awe she moved back and away from him.