"So, when you're old and I am still young, we shall be about the same age."
She laughed:
"What a calculation! No, you're older. But age doesn't go by years."
"No. I sometimes have very young wishes. Do you know what I have been longing for since yesterday, like a baby, like a boy?"
"No."
"A motor-car."
She laughed, with a laugh like little tinkling bells:
"A motor-car?"
"Wouldn't it be delightful? To go tearing and tearing over fields and roads, through clouds of dust . . ."
"You're becoming poetic!"
"Yes, it's making me poetic . . ."
"And the smell of the petrol? . . . The mask and goggles against the dust? . . . The hideous dress? . . ."
"Oh, that's nothing! . . . To tear and fly along, faster and faster, at a mad pace . . ."
"I have never been in a motor-car . . ."[1]
"I have, in Brussels, in a friend's car. There's nothing to come up to it."
Her laugh tinkled out again:
"Yes, now you're most certainly like a boy!"
- ↑ The period of the novel is about 1901.
