The editors praised Captain Chalender as “our popular and public-spirited citizen, a soldier and a leader in civic affairs, whose large interests compel his immediate return to the Golden Gate, whither he takes as his bride, Miss Imogene RoBards, one of the belles of the season.” They even had a word for ex-Judge David RoBards, “the well-known jurist,” and continued, “The bride’s mother in her day was one of the beauties of her generation and a toast of the town in the gallant old times that are now no more.” RoBards brought the paper home to the farm from town to show Patty. He thought only of the comfort she should take from the glossing over of the wretched misalliance. But Patty was numb to the fear of publication. As soon as she spoke he wondered that he had lacked the common intelligence to spare her the cruelest of wounds. She read the brief notice and sighed: “‘The bride’s mother—in her day—was!’” She dropped the paper and smiled miserably: “They’ve got me in the obituary column already.” She seemed to die then. He understood, and falling on his knees by the rocking chair, caught her as she drooped forward across his shoulder. She had read her death-warrant. Her head rolled as heavily as if the ax had already fallen on the so kissable nape of her gracile neck. What could RoBards say? He could and did protest that she was more beautiful than ever, that eternal youth was hers, that she was his greatest pride, that she had all his love, all his love. But he protested too much. He could not stay the scythe of Time. He thought of old, old phrases, ancient confessions of the dread meekness of humanity before the ineluctable dragon, the glutton of charm and fleetness and vivacity—_Tempus edax rerum_—_tarda vetustas_—the swift fugacity of everything, youth that flows out of the veins as sand from a shattered hourglass. He clung to Patty, but less and less as one who might rescue her from drowning, more as one who would prove his love by drowning with her. He could give her no courage in a battle already irretrievably lost. Rather, he took panic from her and began to understand that, while he had no beauty to lose, he had already caught up with his future, and was beginning to leave it behind, as a man who walks toward the west all day overtakes his diminishing shadow and then leaves it lengthening aft. Youth had gone out of the house, too, now that Immy had taken with her not only her trunks and her bright gowns and her jingling trinkets, but her laughter, as well, her mischief, her audacities, her headlong genius for peril.