udy.

With restored youth superimposed upon that exhaustive knowledge of
life--every phase of it that counted in her calculations--the
rejuvenation of all her great natural endowments, she'd probably go
back and rule Europe! What use could she possibly have for any man?

He made himself a cup of coffee over his electric stove, turned off the
malodorous gas, which affected his head, stood out on his balcony for a
moment, then lit his pipe and felt in a more mellow mood.

After all, she had suffered as only a woman so liberally endowed could
suffer, and over a long period of years. She had known despair and
humiliation and bewilderment, lethargic hopelessness, and finally a
complete sacrifice of self. His imagination, in spite of his
rebellious soul, had furnished the background for that bald recital.

And she must have an indomitable soul, some inner super-fine spiritual
essence, with which arrogance and even pride had less to do than she
imagined. Otherwise, after the life she had led, she would either have
become an imperious uncomfortable old woman or one of those faltering
non-entities crowded into the backwaters of life by a generation which
inspires them with nothing but timidity and disapproval. Towering
individualities often go down to defeat in old age.

And nothing could alter the fact that she was the most beautiful and
the most wholly desirable woman he had ever known, the one woman who
had focussed every aspiration of his mind, his soul, and his body. He
knew he must ask himself the inevitable question and face it without
blinking. Was he appalled by her real age; could he ever get away from
the indubious fact that whatever miracle science may have effected, her
literal age was verging on sixty? If she were not an old woman she had
been one. That beautiful body had withered, undesired of all men, that
perfect face had been the battered mirror of an aged ego. He did not
ask himself if the metamorphosis would last, if the shell might not
wither again tomorrow. He was abreast of the important scientific
discoveries of his day and was not at all astonished that the problem
of senescence should be solved. It was no more remarkable than
wireless, the Roentgen Ray, the properties of radium, or any one of the
beneficent contributions of science to the well-being of mankind that
were now too familiar for discussion. He had heard a good deal of this
particular discovery as applied to men. No doubt Di