"I 've been thinking of your suggestion," said Adrian.
"Yes--your suggestion that I should marry her."
"Yes," said Adrian, blandly. "I think the suggestion is decidedly a happy one. I think I shall pay my court to her."
"_You_? Man, you 're bereft of your senses," said Anthony, with force.
"You need n't be so violent," said Adrian. "It's your own idea."
"I was making game of you--I was pulling your leg. Marry her? She would n't look at you," said Anthony, contumelious.
"Why not, I should like to know?" Adrian haughtily enquired.
"You 're--you 're too young," Anthony reminded him.
"Too young?" mildly demurred Adrian, wide-eyed. "I 'm thirty, if I 'm a day."
"You 're thirty-nine, if you 're a day," said Anthony. "But you 'll never be thirty--not even when you 're forty. You breathe perennial spring."
"I confess," said Adrian, with deliberation, "I freely confess that I am not an effete and blasé old thing, like--like one who shall be nameless. There is a variety of fruit (the husbandman's despair), a tough, cross-grained, sour-hearted variety of fruit, that dries up and shrivels, and never ripens. There is another variety of fruit that grows rounder and rosier, tenderer and juicier and sweeter, the longer it hangs on the tree. Time cannot wither it. The child of the sun and the zephyr, it is honey-full and fragrant even unto its inmost ripe red core."
He expanded his chest, and significantly thumped it.
"Mark you," he resumed, "I name no names. The soul of delicacy and discretion, as of modesty and kindness, I name no names. But as for myself, that I am young I acknowledge. Those whom the gods love are ever young. Yet I am old enough, at least, to be capable of fresh, impulsive feelings. I am old enough to have cast the crude, harsh pessimism of inexperience. I am old enough to have outlived my disillusions. I am old enough to have learned that the good things of life are good, and to understand that the rose-buds in the garden are there to be gathered. And I 'm not such a silly as to forbear to gather them. I think I shall make Madame Torrebianca the object of my respectful solicitations."
"Oh, the fatuity of the man!" he jeered. "If you could see yourself. You 're sandy-haired--and miles too fat."