(after the babies are weaned) is hostility. We hated our elders, because
they got in our way. And they'll hate us as soon as they get the
strength to, because we'll be in their way. And we will hate them
because they will want to push us off the scene. It's impossible to
ignore the gulf. Most human tragedies come from trying to pretend it's
not there."

"Why, Mr. Welles," cried Marise again, "what do you say to such talk?
Don't you find him perfectly preposterous?"

Mr. Welles answered a little absently. "Oh, I'm pretty well used to him,
by now. And all his friends in the city are talking like that now. It's
the fashion. I'm so old that I've seen a good many fashions in talk come
and go. I never could see that people _acted_ any differently, no matter
which way they talk." As he finished, he drew a long sigh, which had
obviously no connection with what he had been saying. With the sigh,
came an emanation from him of dispirited fatigue. Marise wished she
dared draw his hand upon her arm and ask him to lean on her as they
walked.

Nothing more was said for a time. Marise lost herself in the outdoor
wideness of impression that always came to her under a night sky, where
she felt infinity hovering near. She was aware of nothing but the faint
voice of the pines, the distant diminuendo of the frog's song, the firm
elastic quality of the ground under her feet, so different from the iron
rigidity of the winter earth, and the cool soft pressure of the
night-air on her cheeks, when, like something thrust into her mind from
the outside, there rose into her consciousness, articulate and complete,
the reason why she had shrunk from looking at the photograph of Rocca di
Papa. It was because it was painful to her, intimately painful and