"Oh, I can't complain! If it isn't quite the same world that it was, the fault's in me.

I'm getting old, Lize! Eight-and-thirty come next March!" A palpable chill touched the woman; she shivered, then laughed a little hysterically, and finished her wine.
"Ssh! Ssh! Don't say such things!" Blake refilled her glass.

"I was jesting.

A man is as old as he feels; a woman--" He lifted his own glass and smiled into her eyes with a certain kindliness of understanding.

"Come, Lize! The old times aren't so far behind us! 'Twas only yesterday that Jacques Aujet painted you as the Bacchante in his 'Masque of Folly.' Do you remember how angry you were when he used to kiss you, and the grape juice used to run into your hair and down your neck?
Why, 'twas hardly yesterday!" The woman looked down, and for a moment a shadow seemed to rest upon her--a something tangible and even fearful, that lent to her mask-like face a momentary humanity.
"_Mon ami_," she said, in a toneless voice, "do you remember that Jacques is ten years dead ?" Then suddenly, as if fleeing from her own fear, she looked up again, surfeiting her senses with the crowds, the lights, the smoke and scent and crashing music.
"But what folly!" she cried.