."

Madame Zattiany smiled amiably at the one woman in the room who had
lingered in the pleasant spaces of middle age. "Very well. I'll be as
little technical as possible. . . . As you know, I ran a hospital in
Buda Pesth during the war. After the revolution broke out I was forced
to leave in secret to escape being murdered. I was on Bela Kun's
list----"

There was a sympathetic rustle in the group. This at least they could
grasp on the wing. Mrs. de Lacey interrupted to beg for exciting
details, but Mrs. Goodrich and Mrs. Tracy cried simultaneously:

"No! No! Go on--please!"

"Quite right," said Mrs. Oglethorpe, who was prepared to enjoy herself.
"We can have that later."

"I naturally went to Vienna, not only because I had some money invested
there, but because I could live in the Zattiany Palace. The old house
was difficult to keep warm, and as I was too tired and nervous to
struggle with any new problems I went at a friend's suggestion into a
sanitarium.

"The doctor in charge soon began to pay me something more than
perfunctory visits when he found that intelligent conversation after my
long dearth did me more good than harm. Finally he told me of a method
of treatment that might restore my youth, and begged me to undertake
it----"

"Ah!" There were sharp indrawn breaths. Mrs. Vane drew herself
up--figuratively, for she could hardly be more perpendicular, with her
unyielding spine, her long neck encased in whaleboned net and her lofty
head topped off with feathers. A look of hostility dawned in several
pairs of eyes, while frank distaste overspread Mrs. Ruyler's mahogany
visage. Madame Zattiany went on unperturbed.

"It may relieve your minds to hear that I was at first as indifferent as
all of you no doubt would have been. The war--and many other things--had
made me profoundly tired of life--something of course that I do not
expect you to understand. And now that the war was over and my
usefulness at an end, I had nothing to look forward to but the
alleviation of poverty by means of my wealth when it was restored, and
this could be done by trustees. Life had seemed to me to consist mainly
of repetitions. I had run the gamut. But I began to be interested, at
first by the fact that science might be able to accomplish a miracle
where centuries of woman's wit had failed----"

"Wit?" snorted Mrs. Vane. "Ignoble vanity."

"Well, call it that if you like, but the desire to be young again