juvenescence
of yours. Steinach is not an American."

She stamped her foot. "You descend to quibbling. And I have more than
repaid Austria all that I owe her."

"You have given her money and service, but she expects more, and you
pledged yourself to her before you left. And don't forget that she is
the country of your deliberate adoption. A far more momentous thing
than any mere accident of birth. You did not return to America when
Zattiany died. You never even paid her a brief visit after your
marriage. You would not be here now but for the imperative necessities
of business. You are Austrian to your marrow."

"I had a role thrust on me and I played it. My parents came to Europe
every year until they died. When Zattiany went, there were no ties to
draw me back and habit is strong. But--underneath--I don't believe
that I have ever been other than Mary Ogden."

She blushed as she said it, and he looked at her keenly.

"I think I understand. He is a very clever young man--of an
outstanding cleverness, I am told. Or it may be that he is merely in
love, and love's delusions are infinite--for a time. I doubt if a
young man with so brilliant an intellect would, if he faced himself in
honest detachment, admit that he believed anything of the sort. Nor do
you, my dear Marie, nor do you."

She twisted her hands together, but would not raise her eyes. He bent
forward again and said harshly:

"Marie! Glance inward. Do you see nothing that causes you to feel
ashamed and foolish? Do you--_you_--fail to recognize the indecency of
a woman of your mental age permitting herself to fancy that she is
experiencing the authentic passions of youth? Are you capable of
creating life? Can you love with unsullied memory? Have you the
ideals of youth, the plasticity, the hopes, the illusions? Have you
still even that power of desperate mental passion, so often
subordinating the merely physical, of the mature woman who seeks for
the last time to find in love what love has not? The final delusion.
No, Marie. Your revivified glands have restored to you the appearance
and the strength of youth, but, although you have played with a role
that appealed to your vanity, to your histrionic powers--with yourself
as chief audience--your natural desire to see if you could not be--to
yourself, again--as young as you appear, you have no more illusion in
your soul than when you were a withered old woman in Vienna."

She looked