THE SACRED FOUNT
ness of them. "He looks a hundred years old!"
"Oh, but you should see his shoulders, always, as he goes off! Two centuries—ten! Isn't it amazing?"
It was so amazing that, for a little, it made us reciprocally stare. "I should have thought," he said, "that he would have been on the contrary———"
"Visibly rejuvenated? So should I. I must make it out," I added. "I shall."
But Obert, with less to go upon, couldn't wait. It was wonderful, for that matter—and for all I had to go upon—how I myself could. I did so, at this moment, in my refreshed intensity, by the help of confusedly lighting another cigarette, which I should have no time to smoke. "I should have thought," my friend continued, "that he too might have changed back."
I took in, for myself, so much more of it than I could say! "Certainly. You wouldn't have thought he would have changed forward." Then with an impulse that bridged over an abyss of connections I jumped to another place. "Was what you most saw while you were there with her—was this that her misery, the misery you first phrased to me, has dropped?"
"Dropped, yes." He was clear about it. "I called her beastly unhappy to you though I even
228
