you and one of the _dames galantes_ of her day. She has taken the
treatment and looks many years younger, at least, than when she was a
painted old hag with a red wig. She is still forced to employ
artifice, but she has lovers again, and that is all she did it for.
Vienna is highly amused. No doubt all women of her sort will take it
for no other purpose. But many of the intellectual women of Europe are
taking it, too--and with the sole purpose of reinvigorating their
mental faculties and recapturing the physical endurance necessary to
their work. I happen to know of a woman scientist, Frau Bloch, who is
now working sixteen hours a day, and she had had a bitter struggle with
her enfeebled forces to work at all. Lorenz is no more remarkable. He
seems to be the only disciple besides yourself that this country has
heard of, but I could name a hundred men, out of my own knowledge, who
are once more working with all the vigor of youth----"

"Yes," she interrupted sarcastically. "And without a thought of women,
of course."

"Probably not." He waved his hand negligently. "But incidentally.
That is where men have the supreme advantage of women. The woman is an
incident in their lives, even when sincerely in love. And if these men
indulge occasionally in the pleasures of youth, or even marry young
wives, the world will not be interested. But with women, who renew
their youth and return to its follies, it will be quite another matter.
If they are not made the theme of obscene lampoons they may count
themselves fortunate. There will certainly be verbal lampoons in
private."

"Orthodoxy! Orthodoxy!"

"Possibly. But orthodoxy is a fixed habit of mind. The average man
and woman hug their orthodoxies and spit their venom on those that
outrage them. How it may be some years hence, when this cure for
senescence has become a commonplace, I do not pretend to say. But so
it is today. Personally, no doubt, you would be indifferent, for you
have a contemptuously independent mind. But your career and your
usefulness would be at an end."

"And suppose I am quite indifferent to that?"

"Ah, but you are not. I will not say that I have killed Mary Ogden
during this painful hour, for it is impossible to kill the dead, but I
have exorcised her ghost. She will not come again. If you marry this
young man it will be out of defiance, or possibly out of a mistaken
consideration for him--although he will be an object for s