He is not quite ancient, but very old. Once, when she was young and naive, she looked at him and thought, 'If I believed in God, that's what he would look like.' But God-like or not, it is clear that he knows more than he lets on.
Back when she was young, she wondered what kind of truth could be so horrible that he had to go to such great lengths to hide it. Her kind of truth, she realizes now. And his mask is straightforward and honest, so much better than her own. She hides the fact that she is hiding something, but some day the whole world will know.
He is cool to the touch and she wonders why. She wants to grasp his shoulders and shake the truth out of him, watch it pour from his lips in rivers that pool around their feet; and she wants to stomp on the truth so maybe it will go away. She wants to ask, how do you live with it? How do you remember yourself?
(But she knows the answer is, and always was, "I don't.")