Zara seated herself, and made me occupy a low chair beside her.
"Tell me," she said, "can you not come here and stay with me while you are under Casimir's treatment ?" I thought of Madame Denise and her Pension.
"I wish I could," I said; "but I fear my friends would want to know where I am staying, and explanations would have to be given, which I do not feel disposed to enter upon." "Why," went on Zara quietly, "you have only to say that you are being attended by a Dr.Casimir who wishes to have you under his own supervision, and that you are therefore staying in his house under the chaperonage of his sister." I laughed at the idea of Zara playing the chaperon, and told her she was far too young and beautiful to enact that character.
"Do you know how old I am ?" she asked, with a slight smile.
I guessed seventeen, or at any rate not more than twenty.
"I am thirty-eight," said Zara.
Thirty-eight! Impossible! I would not believe it.

I could not.

I laughed scornfully at such an absurdity, looking at her as she sat there a perfect model of youthful grace and loveliness, with her lustrous eyes and rose-tinted complexion.
"You may doubt me if you choose," she said, still smiling; "but I have told you the truth.

I am thirty-eight years of age according to the world's counting.

What I am, measured by another standard of time, matters not just now.