dom to it beyond the assertion of her conviction that
such things were wicked and should be stopped by law, at which her
daughter was sufficiently unfilial to draw a diverting picture of a
stalwart policeman trying to arrest an elusive adept who could probably
make himself invisible at will, or call to his aid fire-breathing
dragons, just as easily as he could make a tennis ball evaporate into
thin air, or grow lovely witch-roses and wither them to ashes with a
breath.

"I do think it was a bit mean of him not to let that poor young man have
one of them, if he was willing to take the risk. Especially as he just
wanted to go on working for Science for ever. Fancy what a single man
might do if he could just keep right on with his life-work for, say, a
thousand years without having to stop it to die and be born again,
according to Niti's pet theory. What couldn't a man like that do for
human knowledge!"

"Would you have had one of those roses, Brenda, if the Prince's
miracle-worker had offered you one?" asked Nitocris, smiling, but still
with a decided note of seriousness in her tone.

"I?" laughed Brenda, leaning back in her chair. "Sakes, no, child! I've
had a pretty good time so far, and I hope it won't be over just yet;
but, after all, there must be a limit even to the combinations of human
life, and a time would have to come when you'd just be doing the same
old things over and over again. And, besides that, think of the horror
of living on and on and seeing every one you loved--husband and wife,
and children and grandchildren--grow old and die, and leave you alone in
a world of strangers. No; life's a good thing if you only have fair play
in the world; but so is death when you've lived your life. It's only
like going to bed, after all. Eternal life would be like a day with no
night to it, and that, I guess, would get a bit monotonous after a
century or two. What do you think, Professor?"

"My dear Miss van Huysman," replied her host with one of his rare but
eloquent smiles, "since I began to study the question with anything
like enlightenment, I have not been able to look upon what we call life,
by which I mean existence in this or some other world, as anything but
eternal. In its manifestations to our senses it is, I admit, merely
transitory, a brief span of time between two other states which, for
want of a better word, we may call two eternities; but I must confess
that, to me, a human existence beginning with