"But it hasn't!" cried the Older Man hotly. "You've just confessed
that it hasn't!" In an amazing impulse of protest he reached out and
shook his freckled fist right under the Younger Man's nose. "Twenty, I
tell you, hasn't got any individuality at all!" he persisted
vehemently.

"Twenty isn't anything at all except the threadbare cloak of her
father's idiosyncrasies, lined with her mother's made-over tact,
trimmed with her great-aunt somebody's short-lipped smile, shrouding a
brand-new frame of--God knows what!"

"Eh? What?" questioned the Younger Man uneasily.

"When a girl is twenty, I tell you," persisted the Older Man--"there's
not one marrying man among us--Heaven help us!--who can swear whether
her charm is Love's own permanent food or just Nature's temporary
bait! At twenty, I tell you, there's not one man among us who can
prove whether vivacity is temperament or just plain kiddishness;
whether sweetness is real disposition or just coquetry; whether
tenderness is personal discrimination or just sex; whether dumbness is
stupidity or just brain hoarding its immature treasure; whether indeed
coldness is prudery or just conscious passion banking its fires! The
dear daredevil sweetheart whom you worship at eighteen will evolve,
likelier than not, into a mighty sour prig at forty; and the
dove-gray lass who led you to church with her prayer-book ribbons
twice every Sunday will very probably decide to go on the vaudeville
stage--when her children are just in the high school; and the
dull-eyed wallflower whom you dodged at all your college dances will
turn out, ten chances to one, the only really wonderful woman you