Then he laughed one of those rare laughs of his,
and I joined him because I was strangely young, light,
and happy to be alive.
"You walk and enjoy walking, yes?" asked Von Gerhard,
scanning my face. "Your cheeks they are like--well, as
unlike the cheeks of the German girls as Diana's are
unlike a dairy maid's. And the nerfs? They no longer
jump, eh?"
"Oh, they jump, but not with weariness. They jump to
get into action again. From a life of too much
excitement I have gone to the other extreme. I shall be
dead of ennui in another six months."
"Ennui?" mused he, "and you are--how is it?--
twenty-eight years, yes? H'm!"
There was a world of exasperation in the last
exclamation.
"I am a thousand years old," it made me exclaim, "a
million!"
"I will prove to you that you are sixteen," declared
Von Gerhard, calmly.
We had come to a fork in the road. At the right the
narrower road ran between two rows of great maples that
made an arch of golden splendor. The frost had kissed
them into a gorgeous radiance.
"Sunshine Avenue," announced Von Gerhard. "It
beckons us away from home, and supper and salad dressing
and duty, but who knows what we shall find at the end of
it!"
"Let's explore," I suggested.
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