self and I'd have opened one
of my veins before I'd have let them find it out. Even then I had as
little use for old men as old men have for old women. Whatever it may
be in men, it's the young heart in women. I had no illusions. Fifty
is fifty. My complexion was gone, my stomach high, and I had the face
of an old war horse. But--and here is the damned trick that nature
plays on us--I hoped--hoped--I dreamed--and as ardently as I ever had
dreamed in my youth, when I was on the look-out for the perfect knight
and before I compromised on James Oglethorpe, who was handsome before
he grew those whiskers and got fat--yes, as ardently as in my youth I
dreamed that these clever intelligent men would look through the old
husk and see only the young heart and the wise brain--I knew that I
could give them more than many a younger woman. But if beauty is only
skin deep the skin is all any man wants, the best of 'em. They treated
me with the most impeccable respect--for the first time in my life I
hated the word--and liked my society because I was an amusing caustic
old woman. Of course they drifted off, either to marry, or because I
terrified them with my sharp tongue: when I loved them most and felt as
if I had poison in my veins. Well, I saved my pride, at all events.

"By the time you came along I had sworn at myself once for all as an
old fool, and, in any case, I would hardly have been equal to falling
in love with a brat of twenty-two."

She seized the stick that always rested against her chair and thumped
the floor with it. "Nevertheless," she exclaimed with savage contempt,
"my heart is as young today as Mary Ogden's. That is the appalling
discovery I have made this week. I'd give my immortal soul to be
thirty again--or look it. Why in heaven's name did nature play us this
appalling dirty trick?"

"But Jane!" He felt like tearing his hair. What was Mary Zattiany's
tragedy to this? Banalities were the only refuge. "Remember that at
thirty you were in love with your husband and bent on having a
family----"

"I meant thirty and all I know now. . . . I'm not so damn sure I'd
have tried to make myself think I was in love with James--who had about
as much imagination as a grasshopper and the most infernal mannerisms.
I'd have found out what love and life meant, that's what! And when I
did I'd have sent codes and traditions to the devil."

"Oh, no, you would not. If you'd had it in you you'd have done it