"I trust and pray that you have yet many years to live." Her husband looked keenly at her.
"You are so good," he answered, "that you are really capable of uttering such a prayer, absurd as it would seem." "Why absurd?
It is unkind of you to say it--" "No, my dear; I know the world very well.

That is all.

I suppose it is impossible for me to make you understand how I love you.

It must seem incredible to you, in the magnificence of your strength and beautiful youth, that a man like me--an artificial man"-- he laughed scornfully--"a creature of paint and dye--let me be honest--a creature with a wig, should be capable of a mad passion.

And yet, Corona," he added, his thin cracked voice trembling with a real emotion, "I do love you--very dearly.
There are two things that make my life bitter: the regret that I did not meet you, that you were not born, when I was young; and worse than that, the knowledge that I must leave you very soon--I, the exhausted dandy, the shadow of what I was, tottering to my grave in a last vain effort to be young for your sake--for your sake, Corona dear.