Count Lavretsky, who was fifty-nine, twirled a grey moustache. "I am one of the few people in the world who do not regret their youth. I do not regret mine, with its immaturity, its follies and subsequent headaches. I would sooner be the scornful philosopher of sixty than the credulous lover of twenty." "He always talks like that," said the Countess to Paul; "but when he met me first he was thirty-five--and"--she laughed--"and now voila--for him there is no difference between twenty and sixty. Expliquez-moi ca." "It's very simple," declared Paul. "In this century the thirties, forties, and fifties don't exist. You're either twenty or sixty." "I hope I shall always be twenty," said the Princess lightly. "Do you find your youth so precious, then?" asked Count Lavretsky. "More than I ever did!" She laughed and again met Paul's eyes. This time she flushed faintly as she held them for a fraction of a second. He had time to catch a veiled soft gleam intimate and disquieting. For some time he did not look again in her direction; when he did, he met in her eyes only the lazy smile with which she regarded all and sundry. Later in the evening she said to him: "I'm glad you opposed Lavretsky. He makes me shiver. He was born old and wrinkled. He has never had a thrill in his life." "And if you don't have thrills when you're young, you can't expect to have them when you're old," said Paul. "He would ask what was the good of thrills." "You don't expect me to answer, Princess." "We know because we're young." They stood laughing in the joy of their full youth, a splendid couple, some distance away from the others, ostensibly inspecting a luminous little Cima on the wall. The Princess loved it as the bright jewel of her collection, and Paul, with his sense of beauty and knowledge of art, loved it too. Yet, instead of talking of the picture, they talked of Lavretsky, who was looking at them sardonically from beneath his heavy eyelids. CHAPTER XII