Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/785

"In a way that is true," said he, "but not in this way, for, as I thought it over, I remembered that we have no children, and that we have few desires which the money we have already gathered can not buy. Also we are fairly well off, we have enough in the stocking to last our time even if I ceased from business, which I am not going to do, and, in short, I discovered that money or its purchasing power had not any particular advantages to offer."

"All the same!" said she, and halted with her eyes fixed on bonnets far away in time and space.

"All the same!" he agreed with a smile.

"I could not think of anything worth wishing for," he continued. "I mentioned health and wisdom and we spoke of these, but judging myself by the standard of the world in which we move I concluded that both my health and knowledge were as good as the next man's, and I thought if I elected to become wiser than my contemporaries I might be a very lonely person for the rest of my days."

"Yes," said she thoughtfully, "I am glad you did not ask to be made wise, unless you could have asked it for both of us."

"I asked him in the end what he would advise me to demand, but he replied that he could not advise me at all. 'Behind everything stands desire,' said he, 'and you must find out your desire.'"

"I asked him then, if the opportunity came to him, what he would ask for, not in order that I might copy his wish, but from sheer curiosity, and he replied that he would not ask for anything, and I was about to adopt that attitude—"

"Oh," said his wife.

"When an idea came to me. Here I am, I said to myself, forty-eight years of age, rich enough, sound enough in wind and limb, and as wise as I can afford to be. What is there now belonging to me, absolutely mine, but from which I must part and which I would like to keep? And I sawthat the thing which was leaving me day by day, second by second, irretrievably and inevitably, was my forty-eight years, and I thought I would like to continue at the age of forty-eight until my time was up."

"I did not ask to live for ever, or any of that nonsense, but I asked to be allowed to stay at the age of forty-eight years with all the equipment of my present state unimpaired."

"You should not have asked for such a thing," said his wife, a