what the girls he knew called "one
of the older men." He could imagine himself at twenty-four, but beyond
that, his powers staggered and refused the task. He saw little essential
difference between thirty-eight and eighty-eight, and his mother was to
him not a woman but wholly a mother. He had no perception of her other
than as an adjunct to himself, his mother; nor could he imagine her
thinking or doing anything--falling in love, walking with a friend, or
reading a book--as a woman, and not as his mother. The woman, Isabel,
was a stranger to her son; as completely a stranger as if he had never
in his life seen her or heard her voice. And it was to-night, while he
stood with her, "receiving," that he caught a disquieting glimpse of
this stranger whom he thus fleetingly encountered for the first time.

Youth cannot imagine romance apart from youth. That is why the roles of
the heroes and heroines of plays are given by the managers to the most
youthful actors they can find among the competent. Both middle-aged
people and young people enjoy a play about young lovers; but only
middle-aged people will tolerate a play about middle-aged lovers; young
people will not come to see such a play, because, for them, middle-aged
lovers are a joke--not a very funny one. Therefore, to bring both the
middle-aged people and the young people into his house, the manager
makes his romance as young as he can. Youth will indeed be served, and
its profound instinct is to be not only scornfully amused but vaguely
angered by middle-age romance. So, standing beside his mother, George
was disturbed by a sudden impression, coming upon him out of nowhere,
so far as he could detect, that her eyes were brilliant, that she was
graceful and youthful--in a word, that she was romantically lovely.

He had one of those curious moments that seem to have neither a
cause nor any connection with actual things. While it lasted, he was
disquieted not by thoughts--for he had no definite thoughts--but by a
slight emotion like that caused in a dream by the presence of something
invisible soundless, and yet fantastic. There was nothing different or
new about his mother, except her new black and silver dress: she was
standing there beside him, bending her head a little in her greetings,
smiling the same smile she had worn for the half-hour that people had
been passing the "receiving" group. Her face was flushed, but the room
was warm; and shaking hands with so many peo