The young man’s hands closed tightly, and in his eyes there was disappointment and anger and some contempt. “Yes, John, I believe I _could_ write a few elegies on the death of this Sun, who has shed his blood in his fight with Night, and has spattered it all over the sky, so that the angels will have to wash it off with their tears. Sunsets are my forte, anyway--”
“I have never seen any of your verses,” she said.
“Then you may congratulate yourself upon your lucky escape.”
The gray-haired man smiled good-naturedly and patted her cheek; and she held it up to be kissed, and nestled closer to him. Then she looked at the young man, and in her eyes there was still defiance, and, though she would not have shown it, some interest. She said, “I have heard so much about them that I should like to read them.”
“You are reckless.” And the bantering tone did not hide from her the significance that lay behind his words.
“You must show some of them to her,” said the gray-haired man to him.
“All right. I’ll hunt them up, some time, and send them to you,” said the young man to her.
“Yes,” he replied; “but they are all love songs, and therefore not worth the reading.”
“Indeed!” she said. The gray-haired man patted her cheek indulgently. This time she did not upturn her face for a kiss. And in her voice there was an unnecessary indifference as she said to the young man, “Will you let me read them to-night?”
“Oh, no,” he replied, laughingly, though his eyes were serious.
“In the first place, because they are not worth anything; and then you might get an impression that I really meant what I wrote, and that I am deeply in love with some one.”
“And you are not in love?” There was a challenge in her voice. The gray-haired man smiled at her girlish, artless curiosity.
“Certainly not!” the young man said decidedly.
“But were you in love when you wrote them?”
“I really don’t know,” he answered. “Perhaps I was.”
“Well, _I_ am,” she said, looking at him steadily. And when his eyes had shown astonishment and had begun to shine with irrepressible hope, she continued: “Indeed I am,--with my own dearest husband, who is so good to me. Am I not, darling?” And she entwined her arms about the gray-haired man’s neck and kissed him on the lips twice. And the gray-haired man laughed and looked pleased.
