Adrian lit a cigarette and walked instead of taking the elevator.  It was appropriate to his mood that on the second floor some one with a golden Italian voice should be singing “Louise.”  He paused for a moment.  He was reminded of a night long ago in Verona, when there had been an open window and moonlight in the street.  Then he looked at his watch.  He was late; he would have to hurry.  It amused him that at his age he should still fear the silent rebuke with which his uncle punished unpunctuality.

He arrived at his destination as a near-by church clock struck the half-hour.  The new butler admitted him and led him back to where his uncle was sitting by an open window; the curtains stirred in the languid breeze, the suave room was a little penetrated by the night, as if some sly, disorderly spirit was investigating uninvited.  It was far too hot for the wood fire—­that part of the formula had been omitted, but otherwise each detail was the same.  “The two hundredth time!” Adrian thought to himself.  “The two hundredth time, at least!  It will go on forever!” And then the formula was altered again, for his uncle got to his feet, laying aside the evening paper with his usual precise care.  “My dear fellow,” he began, “so good of you!  On the minute, too!  I——­” and then he stumbled and put out his hand.  “My glasses!” he said.

Adrian caught him and held him upright.  He swayed a little.  “I——­Lately I have had to use them sometimes, even when not reading,” he murmured.  “Thank you!  Thank you!”

Adrian went back to the chair where his uncle had been sitting.  He found the glasses—­gold pince-nez—­but they were broken neatly in the middle, lying on the floor, as if they had dropped from someone’s hand.  He looked at them for a moment, puzzled, before he gave them back to his uncle.

“Here they are, sir,” he said.  “But—­it’s very curious.  They’re broken in such an odd way.”

His uncle peered down at them.  He hesitated and cleared his throat.  “Yes,” he began; then he stood up straight, with an unexpected twist of his shoulders.  “I was turning them between my fingers,” he said, “just before you came in.  I had no idea—­no, no idea!  Shall we go in?  I think dinner has been announced.”

There was the sherry in the little, deeply cut glasses, and the clear soup, with a dash of lemon in it, and the fish, and afterward the roast chicken, with vegetables discreetly limited and designed not to detract from the main dish; and there was a pint of champagne for Adrian and a mild white wine for his uncle.  The latter twisted his mouth in a dry smile.  “One finds it difficult to get old,” he said.  “I have always been very fond of champagne.  More aesthetically I think than the actual taste.  It seems to sum up so well the evening mood—­dinner and laughter and forgetting the day.  But now——­” he flicked contemptuously the stem of his glass—­“I am only allowed this uninspired stuff.”  He stopped suddenly and his face twisted into the slight grimace which Adrian in the last few weeks had been permitted occasionally to see.  His hand began to wander vaguely over the white expanse of his shirt.