as bitterly as the silliest woman I had ever met.

"Some women merely fade: lose their complexions, the brightness of their
eyes and hair. Others grow heavy, solid; stout or flabby; the muscles of
the face and neck loosen and sag, the features alter. I seemed slowly to
dry up--wither. There was no flesh to hang or loose skin to wrinkle, but
it seemed to me that I had ten thousand lines. I thought it a horrid
fate. I could not know that Nature, meaning to be cruel, had given me
the best chance for the renewal of the appearance as well as the fact of
youth.

"I suppose all this seems trivial to you--this mourning over lost
youth----"

"Not at all. It must have been hell to a woman like you. As for women
in general--they may make more fuss about it, but I fancy they hate it
less than men."

"Yes, men are vainer than women," said Madame Zattiany indifferently.
"But I have yet to waste any sympathy on men. . . .

"I suppose I only fully realized that my youth, my beauty, my magnetic
charm, had gone when men ceased to make violent love to me. They still
paid court, for I was a very important person, my great prestige was a
sort of halo, and I had never neglected my mind. There was nothing of
significance I had not read during all these years. I was as profoundly
interested in the great political currents of Europe, seen and unseen, as
any man--or as any intelligent woman of European society. Moreover, I
had the art of life down to a fine point, and I had not forgotten that
even in friendship men are drawn to the subtle woman who knows how to
envelop herself in a certain mystery. And European men are always eager
to talk with an accomplished woman, even if she has no longer the power
to stir their facile passions.

"When I realized that my sex power had left me I adopted an entirely new
set of tactics--never would I provoke a cynical smile on the faces I once
had the power to distort! With no evidence of regret for my lost
enchantment I remained merely the alert and always interested woman of
the world, to whom men, if sufficiently entertaining, were welcome
companions for the moment, nothing more. I cemented many friendships, I
cultivated a cynical philosophy--for my own private succor--and although,
for a time, there were moments of bewildered groping and of intense
rebellion, or a sudden and hideous sense of inferiority, I twisted the
necks of those noxious weeds thrusting themselves upward into my
con