In the gap of twenty years between girl and woman, what devastating life forces might have been at work, wiping bloom from cheek, dulling gleam from eyes, distorting lips, smiting haggard lines on face, hardening or unshapening sweet and beloved contours; hardening, too, the mind, drying up the heart, arresting the development of the soul? As he had never thought to see her in this world again, he had not speculated on such a natural life-change. It was only now, when he had met her in the gracious fullness of her woman’s beauty, that he shivered at the thought of that which might have been and exulted in the knowledge of that which was. He remembered a woman, a friend of his wife, though much older, a lovely dream of a woman of the fair, frail type, who had disappeared from Cambridge for two or three years and then returned—suddenly old, as though a withering hand had passed over her face. No such hand had touched Marcelle. Then he pulled himself up and thought. How old is she? Thirty-eight—thirty-nine. Twelve years younger than himself. He laughed out loud. A mere child! What could she yet have to do with withering hands? Fifty—thirty-eight! The heyday of life. What is fifty when a man feels as young as at twenty-five? Novelists and dramatists were responsible for the conventional idea of the decrepitude of man after forty. The brilliant and compelling works of fiction are generally the inspirations of young men who think the thirties are an age of incipient decay. “An old dangling bachelor who was single at fifty!” cries the abusive Lady Teazle. An old bachelor of fifty! Sheridan, of six-and-twenty, thought of Sir Peter as the lean and slippered pantaloon; and so has dramatic tradition always represented him. “Damn it!” cried Baltazar, feeling his muscles as he strode about his bedroom, “I’m as hard as iron.” Satisfied with his youth, he sat down and wrote impulsive pages to Marcelle, which he posted in the hotel post-box before going to bed. He ordered lunch the next day in the great room of the Savoy. “I’m having my son,” he said to the _maître-d’hotel_, with a thrill at the new and unfamiliar word. “He has been wounded. I want the very best you can do for us.” The _maître-d’hotel_, pencil and pad in hand, made profuse suggestions. But Baltazar had forgotten the terms and indeed the items of European gastronomy. “I leave it in your hands. The best the Savoy can do. It’s the first meal I’ve had with my son—since—— And wine. Champagne. What do you recommend?” The _maître-d’hotel_ pointed to a 1904 vintage on the list. There was nothing better, said he. Baltazar agreed, suddenly aware that he knew no more of vintage wines than of artillery drill. His ignorance irritated him. “Do you mind if I look at that for a little?”