“That’s right,” he assented wonderingly. “I never thought of it that way before. I don’t know why it is except maybe because I never had any boyhood or had a chance to be young. I seem to have been born grown up an’ on the lookout to get the best of the next feller. Then, when I get with you, I lose about twenty years and feel like a kid. It’s great to be that way. Nobody else ever makes me feel so.” “I suppose not,” mocked the girl. “Your other friends are fossly people all about a million years old. And you look on me as a child and try to talk and act down to my level. It is _very_ humiliating. I’m nearly twenty and quite grown up and--” “Your eyes are, anyhow,” commented Caleb. “They’re two sizes too large for your face.” “Is that a compliment? If it is--” “I don’t know,” pursued Conover. “I never noticed how big they was till one day when you were drinkin’ ice-tea. Then, all of a sudden, it struck me that if your eyes wasn’t so big you’d be li’ble to tumble into your glass. Now you’re mad again!” he sighed. “But it’s true. You’re awful little. You don’t much more’n come up to my elbow.” “When you’re _quite_ through saying woozzey things about my size and my eyes,” said Desirée, coldly, “perhaps you won’t mind talking of something sensible?” “If you’d just as leave,” hesitated Caleb, “I’d like to talk a little ’bout what you said a few minutes ago. About my bein’ young. You don’t get it quite right. I’m not young an’ I never was or will be,--except with you. When you an’ me are together, some part of me that I don’t gener’lly know is there, seems to take charge. Maybe I don’t explain it very clear. I don’t seem quite to understand it myself. Here’s the idee: D’you remember that measly little green-covered French book I found you cryin’ over, once? The ‘Vee’ of something.” “You mean Barriere’s ‘_Vie de Bohéme_?’” “That’s it. The French play you said was wrote from a book by some other parly-voo chap. You told me the story of it, I remember. It didn’t make much of a hit with me at the time, an’ I couldn’t quite see where the cry come in. But I got to thinkin’ of it when you spoke just now. Remember the chap in there who told the girl she was his Youth an’ that if it wasn’t for her he’d be nothin’ but just a plain grown man? ’Twas _her_ that kep’ him feelin’ like a boy. An’ then when she died--let’s see--what was it he hollered? Something ’bout--” “‘_O, ma Jeunesse, c’est vous qu’on enterre_,’” quoted Desirée. “Maybe so,” assented Caleb, doubtfully. “It sounds like a Chinee laundry ticket to _me_. That was the part you were cryin’ over, too. What is it in English?” “‘Oh my _Youth_, it is _you_ they are burying!’” translated the girl. “That’s the answer,” said Conover, gravely. “Now let’s talk about something better worth while than me. I was chinnin’ with Caine this afternoon about you. He says if you marry the right sort of man, your place in society’s cinched. What do you think of that?”