So, if he was eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, he was--simply--eighteen or seventeen or sixteen. What, by that fact, mattered his birth-certificate? If he was not the age he was, what age was he? How old are you? how old am I? We are as old as our knowledge of ourselves. _Had_ his faculties been impaired--ah, that would have been another matter. But out of that ancient mould of his former history a new sprout had pushed, sweet, vigorous, and identical with itself. That shoot was Derwent Rose. If it was not Derwent Rose where then was Derwent Rose? No Derwent Rose had died. If you would find him you must seek him among the living. Or if any Derwent Rose had died, it was the author of _The Hands of Esau_ and _The Vicarage of Bray_. Dead indeed he might be; for no link now existed between him and his youth, unlettered in anything but the perfection of a beautiful love. He stood in that sagging room in the Rue de la Cordonnerie, what he was and nothing else. He had been it as long as he had been it, and neither more time nor less. No power on earth could make it otherwise. No power in heaven would have tried. "Well, what's to be done?" I asked presently. We were all three sitting on the corn-bin, they together, I nearest the table. They were munching their bread and sausage. "That's perfectly simple," said Derry. "As I've told you, that silly Arnaud business is all over. I'm Derwent Rose. Nobody can say I'm impersonating him, can they? So I must _be_ him, and if I'm him it's just like anybody else being themselves. And I'm awfully sorry it had to be tip-and-run, but there wasn't anything else for it at the time. But that's all over. I've got that beastly memory nearly off my shoulders. I don't know anybody in England. I remember our own village of course--in Sussex it was--and a few odds and ends--and oh!" He slapped his knee. "_That's_ where I heard the name Oliphant! I didn't know Miss Oliphant in England at all. There's a little Julia Oliphant, but she's only a kid, and no relation at all probably. But this one's a bit like what I could imagine little Julia growing up to be. Never mind. What I want to ask you now is about Jennie's people." "Yes, Jennie's people," I said. V It was the drop of gall in the honey of her happiness. She would cut his bread and sausage, learn to darn his socks, sew on his buttons, wash out his handkerchiefs for him; that her hands as well as her heart should serve and adore him was all her joy; but I saw the droop of her head and the tremor of that upturned lip that betrayed the pearls. Julia Oliphant might hardly dare, but this one--ah, she was so recently a child! I think she would even have left Derry's side for ten minutes might they but have been spent with her mother's arms about her and the smell of her father's pipe not far away. I don't know whether a tear had ever dropped on to that ironing-board of Madame's downstairs. I saw one drop now.