remember the lines of Virgil which had matched the Milton. He used to
know them so well:

Matres atque viri defunctaque corpora vita
Magnanimum heroum, pueri innuptaeque puellae.

There were two complex hexameters, but all that remained in his memory
of the rest were two or three disjointed phrases:

Lapsa cadunt folia ... ubi frigidus annus ... et
... terris apricis.

Even at fourteen he had been able to respond to the melancholy of these
lines; really, he had been rather an extraordinary boy. The sensation of
other times which was evoked by walking like this in Richmond Park would
soon be too strong for him any longer not to speak of it. Yet because
those dead summer days seemed now to belong to the mystery of youth, to
the still unexpressed and inviolate heart of a period that was forever
overpast, Michael could not bring himself to destroy their sanctity with
sentimental reminiscence. However, there had been comedy and absurdity
also, perhaps rather more fit for exhumation now than those deeper
moments.

"Do you remember the wedding of Mrs. Ross?" he asked.

"Rather," said Alan, and they both smiled.

"Do you remember when you first called her Aunt Maud, and we both burst
out laughing and had to rush out of the room?"

"Rather," said Alan. "Boys _are_ ridiculous, aren't they?"

"Supposing we both laugh like that when Stella is first called Mrs.
Merivale?" Michael queried.

"I shall be in much too much of a self-conscious funk to laugh at
anything," said Alan.

"And yet do you realize that we're only talking of eight years ago?
Nothing at all really. Six years less than we had already lived at the
time when that wedding took place."

To Alan upon the verge of the most important action of his life
Michael's calculation seemed very profound indeed, and they both walked
on in silence, meditating upon the revelation it afforded of a fugitive
mortality.

"You'll be writing epitaphs next," said Alan, in rather an aggrieved
voice. He had evidently traversed the swift years of the future during
the silence.

"At any rate," Michael said. "You can congratulate yourself upon not
having wasted time."

"My god," cried Alan, stopping suddenly. "I believe I'm the luckiest man
alive."

"I thought you'd found a sovereign," said Michael. He had never heard
Alan come so near to emotional expression and, knowing that a moment
later Alan would be blushing at his want of reserve, he loyally covered