y gripped the skeleton underneath. "Look at me, Marie.
Your Mary Ogden died many, many years ago. She died, I should say, at
the first touch of Otto Zattiany. There was nothing in your new life
to revive her, assuredly not your first lover. Certainly you were
Marie Zattiany, the most subtle, complex, and fascinating woman in
Europe when I met you--but abominably disillusioned even then. I
revived your youth for a time, but never your girlhood. You have been
able to deceive yourself here in the country of that girlhood, for a
time, with this interesting young gentleman in love with you, and, no
doubt, extremely ardent."

"Oh!" Her head sank. But she could not turn away, for his hands still
gripped her shoulders. The roar of the stream sounded to her horrified
ears like the crash of falling ruins.

"Listen, Marie," he said more gently. "If I have been brutal, it was
merely because there was no other way to fling you head first out of
your fool's paradise. If I had not known the common sense that forms
the solid lower stratum of your mind, I should not have come here to
say anything at all. You would not have been worth it. But remember,
Marie, that under this new miracle of science, the body may go back but
never the mind. You, your ego, your mind, your _self_, are no younger
than your fifty-eight hard-lived years. And what object in being young
again for any of us if we are to make the same old mistakes? Remember,
that when you were as young as you look now you had no such opportunity
offered you as in this terrible period of European history. Nor could
you have taken advantage of it if you had, for mere mental brilliancy
and ambition cannot take the place of political experience and an
intellect educated by the world. It may be that we shall both be
destroyed, that our efforts will avail nothing, and we shall all be
swallowed up in chaos. But at least we shall have done what we could.
And I know you well enough to believe that such an implacable end would
give you greater satisfaction than dallying in the arms of a handsome
young husband."

He pushed her back into her chair, and resumed his own. "Would you
like to smoke?" he asked.

"Yes." She looked at him with bitter eyes, but she had recaptured her
threatened composure. He regarded her with admiration but they smoked
in silence for several moments. Then he spoke again.

"You remember Elka Zsaky, I suppose? She was several years older than