wounded, but I was not sorry not to be that shape and phase of
youth, except as I hate to disappoint any one.

Her face was very beautiful; it was quite perfectly beautiful, and
of such classic mould that she might well have been the tutelary
goddess of that temple (if it was a temple, and not a kiosk), in the
white duck costume which the goddesses were wearing that summer.
Her features were Greek, but her looks were American; and she was
none the less a goddess, I decided, because of that air of something
exacting, of not quite satisfied, which made me more and more
willing to be elderly and grey-bearded. I at least should not be
expected to supply the worship necessary to keep such a goddess in
good humour.

I do not know just how I can account for a strain of compassion
which mingled with this sense of irresponsibility in me; perhaps it
was my feeling of security that attuned me to pity; but certainly I
did not look at this young girl long without beginning to grieve for
her, and to weave about her a web of possibilities, which grew
closer and firmer in texture when she was joined by a couple who had
apparently not left her a great while before, and who spoke, without
otherwise saluting her, as they sat down on either side of her. I
instantly interpreted her friends to be the young wife and middle-
aged husband of a second marriage; for they were evidently man and
wife, and he must have been nearly twice as old as she. In person
he tended to the weight which expresses settled prosperity, and a
certain solidification of temperament and character; as to his face,
it was kind, and it was rather humorous, in spite of being a little
slow in the cast of mind it suggested. He wore an iron-grey beard
on his cheeks and chin, but he had his strong upper lip clean