Merely Players
I
"MY dear," said the elder man, "as I've told you a thousand times, what you need is a love-affair with a red-haired woman."
"Bother women," said the younger man, "and hang love-affairs. Women are a pack of samenesses, and love-affairs are damnable iterations."
They were seated at a round table, gay with glass and silver, fruit and wine, in a pretty, rather high-ceiled little grey-and-gold breakfast-room. The French window stood wide open to the soft June day. From the window you could step out upon a small balcony; the balcony overhung a terrace; and a broad flight of steps from the terrace led down into a garden. You could not perceive the boundaries of the garden; in all directions it offered an indefinite perspective, a landscape of green lawns and shadowy alleys, bright parterres of flowers, fountains, and tall, bending trees.
I have spoken of the elder man and the younger, though really there could have been but a trifling disparity in their ages: the elder was perhaps thirty, the younger seven or eight and twenty.
