at him with hostile but agonized eyes.

"Your calculated brutality does not affect me in the least. And you
are merely one more victim of convention--like those old women in New
York. It never has been, therefore it never can be. Many women are
not able to bear children, even in youth."

"It is your turn to quibble. Tell me: until you were attracted to this
young man--attracted, no doubt, because he was so unlike the European
of your long experience--had you deviated from the conclusion, arrived
at many years before, that you had had enough of love--of sex--to
satisfy any woman? You implied as much to me a few moments since. I
know the mental part of you so well that I am positive the mere thought
would have disgusted you. If you had been starved all your life it
would be understandable, but you had experimented and deluded yourself
again and again--and you were burnt out when you came to Vienna to
live--burnt out, not only physically but spiritually. Your imagination
was as arid as a desert without an oasis. If any man had made love to
you then, you would merely have turned on him your weary disillusioned
eyes, or laughed cynically at him and yourself. Your keen aesthetic
sense would have been shocked. You were playing then an important and
ambitious role, you had the greatest political salon in Vienna--in
Europe--and you went away to rest that you might continue to play it,
not that you might feel fresh enough once more to have _liaisons_ like
other foolish old women. . . . But the part you played then was a
bagatelle to the one awaiting you now. With your splendid mental
gifts, your political genius, your acquired statecraft, your wealth,
and your restored beauty, you could become the most powerful woman in
Europe. But only as my wife. Even you are not strong enough to play
the part alone. There is too much prejudice against women to permit
you to pull more than hidden strings. Masculine jealousy of women is
far more irritable in a democracy than in a monarchy, where women of
rank are expected to play a decorative--and tactful part in politics.
But if they step down and come into conflict with ambitious men of the
people, class jealousy aggravates sex jealousy. You might have a salon
again and become a power somewhat in the old fashion, but you never
would be permitted to play a great public role. But as the consort (I
think the word will pass) of the President--or Chancellor--you could
wield alm