"It isn't so bad, being elderly," he said. "By that time we have
accumulated enough past to sit down and really enjoy its associations. We
have got all sorts of perspectives and points of view. We know where we
are at."
"I don't mind being elderly. The world's just as amusing as ever, and
lots of disagreeable things have dropped out. It's the getting more than
elderly; it's the getting old; and then--"
They shrank a little closer together, and walked on in silence till he
said, "Perhaps there's something else, something better--somewhere."
They had reached the balustraded terrace, and were pausing for pleasure
in the garden tops below, with the flowery spaces, and the statued
fountains all coming together. She put her hand on one of the fat little
urchin-groups on the stone coping. "I don't want cherubs, when I can have
these putti. And those old prince-bishops didn't, either!"
"I don't suppose they kept a New England conscience," he said, with a
vague smile. "It would be difficult in the presence of the rococo."
They left the garden through the beautiful gate which the old court
ironsmith Oegg hammered out in lovely forms of leaves and flowers, and
shaped laterally upward, as lightly as if with a waft of his hand, in
gracious Louis Quinze curves; and they looked back at it in the kind of
despair which any perfection inspires.
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