eyes was neither young nor feminine, but elderly and
penetrating. Though Doctor Ebbett's temples were whitely frosted, he and
Eben Tollman had been classmates at Harvard. Now he was to be best man
at his friend's belated marriage. The work in which he had made his name
distinguished had to do with the human brain--its vagaries as well as
its normalities--and his thought was enough in advance of the general to
be frequently misunderstood and sometimes a target for lay ridicule.

On the evening after his arrival he sat in Eben Tollman's study with two
other men who were also classmates. Tollman himself was still at the
manse, and his guests were beguiling themselves with cigars which he had
furnished, and whiskey which he had not--and upon which he would have
frowned.

Over his glass Carton, the corporation lawyer, irrelevantly suggested:

"Eben seems a boy again. It makes us chaps whose children are almost
grown, feel relegated to an elder generation."

"Miss Williams," observed Henry Standing, "has a pretty wit and a
prettier face. I wanted to say to her: 'Now, my dear child, if I were
twenty years younger--' and then I caught myself up short. I chanced to
remember that Eben _isn't_ twenty years younger himself."

Carton nodded thoughtfully. "I can't help feeling that a thing like that
is always a bit chancy. Eben was a sober-sided kid in his cradle and the
girl is all fire and bloom. Fortunately it doesn't seem to have occurred
to her that there's any disparity." He paused, then demanded: "Ebbett,
you're a psychologist. What do you think?"

Dr. Ebbett took his cigar from his lips and studied it with
deliberation. When he spoke his words were laconic.

"I think it's as dangerous as hell."

"But a young wife will rejuvenate him and keep him young, won't she?"

"It's rarely been done before," retorted the doctor drily. "Moreover,
it's not a question of making him young again. A man of our friend's
type is born old."

"Oh, come now," protested Carton. "What's the matter with his type?"

Dr. Ebbett paused, listening to the blizzard's shrieking outside, then
he replied evenly:

"He's too intensely a New Englander. The somber and narrow man represses
one-half of his being and straightway sets up a Mr. Hyde in ambush to
make war on his Dr. Jekyl. Our lunatic asylums are full of patients
whose repressions have driven them mad. The whole Puritan code is a
religion of repression--and it's viciously dangerous."

Dr