man asked himself if it were really fair. At the same time there was
something richly rare in such a relation between the subject and the
artist, and Nick was disposed to go on till he should have to stop for
pity or for shame. He caught eventually a glimmer of the truth
underlying the strangeness, guessed that what upset his friend was
simply the reversal, in such a combination, of his usual terms of
intercourse. He was so accustomed to living upon irony and the
interpretation of things that it was new to him to be himself
interpreted and--as a gentleman who sits for his portrait is always
liable to be--interpreted all ironically. From being outside of the
universe he was suddenly brought into it, and from the position of a
free commentator and critic, an easy amateurish editor of the whole
affair, reduced to that of humble ingredient and contributor. It
occurred afterwards to Nick that he had perhaps brought on a catastrophe
by having happened to throw off as they gossiped or languished, and not
alone without a cruel intention, but with an impulse of genuine
solicitude: "But, my dear fellow, what will you do when you're old?"

"Old? What do you call old?" Nash had replied bravely enough, but with
another perceptible tinge of irritation. "Must I really remind you at
this time of day that that term has no application to such a condition
as mine? It only belongs to you wretched people who have the incurable
superstition of 'doing'; it's the ignoble collapse you prepare for
yourselves when you cease to be able to do. For me there'll be no
collapse, no transition, no clumsy readjustment of attitude; for I
shall only _be_, more and more, with all the accumulations of
experience, the longer I live."

"Oh I'm not particular about the term," said Nick. "If you don't call it
old, the ultimate state, call it weary--call it final. The accumulations
of experience are practically accumulations of fatigue."

"I don't know anything about weariness. I live freshly--it doesn't
fatigue me."

"Then you need never die," Nick declared.

"Certainly; I daresay I'm indestructible, immortal."

Nick laughed out at this--it would be such fine news to some people. But
it was uttered with perfect gravity, and it might very well have been in
the spirit of that gravity that Nash failed to observe his agreement to
sit again the next day. The next and the next and the next passed, but
he never came back.

True enough, punctuality was not impor