"That's no answer," she said.

There was a pause.

"I was beginning to care too much about you," I said. "I think I
was beginning to fall in love with you. I've got out of one false
position. Why should I blunder into another?"

"Would it be a false position to love me?" she said.

"Of course that would a good deal depend on you," I said.

"Suppose I wanted you to," she said.

"Oh, but you couldn't!" I said.

"Why couldn't I?" she said.

"But forty," I objected; "nobody loves anybody who's forty, you
know."

"I do," she said, "though, come to think of it, you were thirty-
nine--when--when it first happened, Hugo."

I put out my arms in the dark and caught her to me. I could not
believe my own good fortune as I felt her trembling and crying
against my breast. I was humbled and ashamed. It was like a dream.
An old fellow like me--forty, you know.