someone to look at, and then to this invisible someone he announced, "Here's a picture of my wife, if you'd like to look at it . . ." A hot flush stung his face. Partly shame, because he was being ridiculous, and partly happiness because the very words were a delirium. . . .
"And do you like the pictures?"
They were sitting close together on the divan, Yvonne's head against Jock's arm. He looked down at her, marveling. Her vivid hair, her face, those long gray lazy-lidded eyes. . . . He thought, "Pictures! They're nothing. It's like trying to photograph a sunset. You get the lines, but not the glory. It's like me when I try to express her in words. Colorless and dead. A painter or a poet could do her justice, but not a camera-man nor a mute fool like me . . ."
He said, "They're beautiful phantoms of you."
"Which do you like best?"
Jock took one from the pile. "This."
Yvonne sighed, glancing at it. "Of course," she said, as though she spoke to no hearer. "The one that looks the youngest."
"Birdseed!" snorted Jock. "You talk as though you were old."
"And don't you think I am?"
"I think you're about my age."
"And how old are you, Jock Hamill?"
"Twenty-two."
She smiled dreamily. "How nice to be twenty-two!"
Jock thought, "She may be a year or two older.
