sat forward, no longer old
friends or rivals, affectionate or resentful, nor the victims of
convention solidified into sharp black and white by the years. They were
composite female.

"It consisted of the concentration of powerful Roentgen--what you call
X-Rays--on that portion of the body covering the ovaries----"

"How horrible!" "Did you feel as if you were being electrocuted?" "Are
you terribly scarred?"

"Not at all. I felt nothing whatever, and there was nothing to cause
scars----"

"But I thought that the X-Rays----"

"Oh, do be quiet, Louisa," exclaimed Mrs. Tracy impatiently. "Please go
on, Countess Zattiany."

"As I said, the application was painless, and if no benefit results,
neither will any harm be done when the Rays are administered by a
conscientious expert. My final consent, as I told you, was due to the
desire to regain my old will power and vitality. I was extremely
skeptical about any effect on my personal appearance. During the first
month I felt so heavy and dull that, in spite of assurances that these
were favorable symptoms, I was secretly convinced that I had forfeited
what little mental health I had retained; but was consoled by the fact
that I slept all night and a part of the day: I had suffered from
insomnia since my duties at the hospital had ended----"

"But surely you must have been nervous and terrified?" All of these
women had seen and suffered illness, but all from time-honored
visitations, even if under new and technical names, and they had suffered
in common with millions of others, which, if it offended their sense of
exclusiveness, at least held the safeguard of normalcy. They felt a
chill of terror, in some cases of revulsion, as Madame Zattiany went on
to picture this abnormal renaissance going on in the body unseen and
unfelt; in the body of one who had been cast in the common mould, subject
to the common fate, and whom they had visioned--when they thought about
her at all--as growing old with themselves; as any natural Christian
woman would. It was not only mysterious and terrifying but subtly
indecent. Mrs. Vane drew back from her eager poise. Almost it seemed to
the amused Mrs. Oglethorpe that she withdrew her skirts. Drama was for
the stage or the movies; at all events drama in private life, among the
elect, was objective, external, and, however offensive, particularly when
screamed in the divorce court, it was, at least, like the old diseases,
remarka