Gregory—or Madame Claire, as Noel and I call her. She's the most wonderful person. When you're better you must come and have tea with us at her hotel."
"I should like that very much," he said. "I get on quite well with old ladies. I find young ones rather alarming nowadays, but perhaps it's because I don't see much of them."
Judy laughed at this.
"Do I alarm you?" she challenged him.
"No," he admitted. "It's very odd, but you don't."
"What a blessing! Shy people—and I am one—usually have the most devastating effect on other shy people. But you'll love Madame Claire. She looks on the world from a kind of Olympus."
"Yet most of us dread growing old," he remarked.
"Yes. Isn't it ridiculous? But I don't. There are times when I envy her her age, and her . . . imperviousness. What a word!"
"It's temperamental, that sort of thing. It's the people who are always seeking gayety that dread old age most. Being Scotch I like grayness, and austere hills, and quiet and mystery. All old things."
