There was an old man and a second, older man who was considerably older than the old man; they were visiting a very old man.  The afternoon passed without them saying a word.  As the sun was low already, the old man said slowly: “I didn’t expect that I would come to think like this.”

The older man slowly took a deeper breath, just barely audible to the other two old men, looked further into the distance and replied: “Yes.”

The old man added: “And there is no point in telling.”  After a short silence, the older man replied: “That is why.”

The very old man kept silent, and so the old man felt silly again for a short moment and took that as a sign, one as good as any other, for that the time had come to leave for home.  He bade goodbye and went.

The older man set the kettle onto the stove and rejoined the very old man.  Late in the evening, the older man broke the silence.  “Old man will come to terms with it” he chuckled.  “A long while ago, he told me that when he was younger, an older man had told him, but that he did not understand then.”  Having thus spoken, the older man felt now to be as good a time as any and he retired for the night.

The very old man, being thus reminded of how he had first met the old man, contemplated for a moment about how little the old man had changed in all those years since.  Lifting his gaze from the landscape that is the pigmented parchment barely covering his knuckles, up to the mirror that allowed him to make out his own shape, he felt that now is as good as any time.