er
income was mostly earned. Neither knew how near the other was, and the
years passed by. Eventually the two met by an accident of the sheerest
kind. Possibly they had almost forgotten each other, though I don't
think that is so. They met among mutual friends, and--there they were. I
have often wondered how it must seem to meet after half a century. There
is something about the brain which makes the reminiscences fresh to one
sometimes, but of an early love story it must be like a dream to the
aged. Something uncertain and vaguely sweet. Just think of it--half a
century, more than one generation, had passed since these two had met.
Their old love story must have seemed to them something all unreal,
something they had but read long ago in a book.

Parasang was a large man, but Mrs. Blood--that was now his old
sweetheart's name--was a small woman. Her hair was nearly white when I
met her, but from the color of a few unchanged strands of it, I imagine
that it must have been red when she was young. Maybe that was why the
lovers' quarrel of over fifty years ago had been so spirited. She was
both spirited and charming, even at seventy-two, and at twenty must have
been a fascinating woman. Parasang was doubtless himself a striking
person when he was young. I have already said what he was like in his
old age. Both the man and woman had retained the personal regard for
themselves which is so pleasant in old people, and Mrs. Blood was still
as dainty as could be, in her trim gowns, generally of some fluffy black
or silvery gray material, and Parasang was as strong and wholesome
looking as an ox. I shall always regret that I was not present when they
met. A study of their faces then would have been worth while.

Parasang once told me about this second wooing of his wife--and it was
droll. There seemed nothing funny about it to him. He said that after
being introduced to Mrs. Blood, and recognizing her in an instant after
all those years, as she did him, they sat down on a sofa together, being
left to entertain each other, as the two oldest people in the room; and
that he uttered a few commonplace sentences, and she replied gently in
the same vein for a little time; and that then each stopped talking, and
that they sat there quietly gazing at each other. And he said that
somehow, looking into her eyes, even with the delicate glasses on them,
the earth seemed to be slipping away, and there was the girl he had
known and loved again