s, the arrest of
infant mortality, the marvels of vivisection and surgery--the list is
endless. It is entirely logical, and no more marvellous, that science
should be able to arrest senescence, put back the clock. The wonder is
that it has not been done before."

She rose, still looking down at the fire, which Clavering had replenished
twice. "I am going now. And I have no fear that you will not keep your
promise! But remember this when thinking it over: I do not merely _look_
young again, _I am_ young. I am not the years I have passed in this
world, I am the age of the rejuvenated glands in my body. Some day we
shall have the proverb: 'A man is as old as his endocrines.' Of course I
cannot have children. The treatment is identical with that for
sterilization. This consideration may influence you. I shall use no
arguments nor seductions. You will have decided upon all that before we
meet again. Good night." And she was gone.

XXX

It seemed to Clavering that he had run the gamut of the emotions while
listening to that brief biography, so sterilely told, but there had
also been times when he had felt as if suspended in a void even while
visited by flashes of acute consciousness that he was being called upon
to know himself for the first time in his life. And in such fashion as
no man had ever been called upon to know himself before.

There was no precedent in life or in fiction to guide him, and he had
realized with a sensation of panic even while she talked that it was
doubtful if any one had ever understood himself since the dawn of time.
Man had certain standards, fixed beliefs, ideals, above all,
habits--how often they scattered to the winds under some unheralded or
teratogenic stress. He had seen it more than once, and not only in
war. Every man had at least two personalities that he was aware of,
and he dimly guessed at others. Some were frank enough to admit that
they had not an idea what they would do in a totally unfamiliar
situation. Clavering had sometimes emblemized man and his
personalities with the old game of the ivory egg. A twist and the
outer egg revealed an inner. Another and one beheld a third. And so
on to the inner unmanipulatable sphere, which might stand for the
always inscrutable soul. Like all intelligent men, he had a fair
knowledge of these two outer layers of personality, and he had
sometimes had a flashing glimpse of others, too elusive to seize and
put unde