'What is wrong, Frau Lenore? You've never been crying, surely?'

'Oh!' she whispered, nodding her head towards the room where her
daughter was.

'Don't speak of it ... aloud.'

'But what have you been crying for?'

'Ah, M'sieu Sanin, I don't know myself what for!'

'No one has hurt your feelings?'

'Oh no!... I felt very low all of a sudden. I thought of Giovanni
Battista ... of my youth ... Then how quickly it had all passed away.
I have grown old, my friend, and I can't reconcile myself to that
anyhow. I feel I'm just the same as I was ... but old age--it's here!
it is here!' Tears came into Frau Lenore's eyes. 'You look at me, I
see, and wonder.... But you will get old too, my friend, and will find
out how bitter it is!'

Sanin tried to comfort her, spoke of her children, in whom her own
youth lived again, even attempted to scoff at her a little, declaring
that she was fishing for compliments ... but she quite seriously
begged him to leave off, and for the first time he realised that for
such a sorrow, the despondency of old age, there is no comfort or
cure; one has to wait till it passes off of itself. He proposed a game
of tresette, and he could have thought of nothing better. She agreed
at once and seemed to get more cheerful.