discarding or the shuffling: during the shuffling especially. He looked
out towards the downs with something of a sigh at one moment, and said:

"It's a happy world."

"Yes," answered the younger man with the proper lugubriousness of youth,
"but it all comes to an end."

"It isn't its coming to an end," said the elder man, declaring a point
of six, "that's not the tragedy; it's the little bits coming to an end
meanwhile, before the whole comes to an end: that's the tragedy...." But
he added with another of his jolly laughs: "We must play. Piquet takes
up all one's grey matter."

They played and the young man lost again, but by a very narrow margin:
it was quite an absorbing game. As they shuffled again the young man
said:

"What did you mean by the little bits stopping, or whatever it was?"

"Oh," said the old man as though he couldn't remember, and then he
added: "Oh, yes, I mean you'll find, as you grow older, people die and
affections change, and, though it seems silly to mention it in company
with higher things, there's what Shelley called the 'contagion of the
world's slow stain.'"

Then their conversation was interrupted by the ardour of the game; but
as they played the young man was ruminating, and he had come to the
conclusion that his senior was imperfectly educated and was probably of
the middle classes, whereas he himself was destined to be a naval