“I was not allowed to fidget when I was young,” I said.  “Perhaps one acquires repose as a habit.”

“When you were young!  Why, you look only a baby now!  I would take you for about eighteen years old, and that is what interests me.  Your eyes have a question and a story in them that is not usual at eighteen.”

“Oh, I am ever so much older than that!  I must be at least fifty!” I said.

He smiled.  “I am fifty.  It is a terrible age.”

“I dare say it would be nice to be fifty if one had been long enough young—­to get there gradually.  But to jump there, that is what is not amusing.”

“And you have jumped to fifty?  I thought there was a story in those Sphinx eyes.”

“Why do you say that?  You are the second person who has said I have the eyes of the Sphinx.  I would like to know why?” I asked.

“Because they are inscrutable.  They suggest much and reveal nothing.  It would interest me deeply to hear your impression of things.”

“What things?”

“The world, the flesh, or the devil—­anything that would make you lift the curtain a little.  For instance, what do you think of this society here now?”

“They all seem to be clever people with interests in life.”

“Most people have interests in life.  The candle would soon burn out otherwise.  What are yours, if I may ask?”

“I am observing.  I have not decided yet what interests me.  I would like to travel, I think, and see the world.”

“That is an easy matter at your age.  But have you no other desires?”

“No, unless it would be to sleep very soundly and enjoy my food.”

“What a little cynic!  A gross little materialist!  And you look the embodiment of etherealism.”

“At fifty I have always understood creature comforts begin to matter more.  Each age has its pleasures.”

He laughed.

“Tell me something else about the emotions of the fifty-year-olds.”

“They get up in the morning and they wonder if it will rain, and, if they are in England, it often answers them by pouring.  Then they breakfast, and wonder if they will read or play the piano or walk, or if it matters a scrap if they do none of these things, and presently they look at the papers, and they see the war is going on still, and people are being killed, and they wonder to what end.  And they read that the opposition is accusing the government of all sorts of crimes and negligences, and they remember that is the fate of governments, whichever side is in.  And then they lunch, perhaps, and see friends.  And they find they want some one else’s husband but their own, and that the husband, perhaps, only cares for sport, or some one else’s wife.  And then they sleep after lunch, and drive, and have tea, and read books about philosophy, and dine, and yawn, and finally go to bed.”

“What a terrible picture!  And when they were young what did they do?”