[...] "Yet to a certain extent you were right in saying that I was putting it on,” said André. “I overdid it. When I saw all those fellows so very much more decrepit than I am and yet still taking things just as they come, without moaning about it at all, I told myself that it really would not do. I decided to pull myself together.”

“Oh, that’s it, then! I thought it was my not being here that had made you so good-tempered again.”

“What a notion! Far from it: it was largely on your account that I determined to take myself in hand. I don’t want to be an old bore. Old is quite enough: bore, no.”

I took his arm: I squeezed it. I had recovered the André I had never lost and that I never should lose. We walked into the garden and sat on a bench at the foot of a cypress. The moon and its little star were shining over the house.