, and there was a curious arrangement of rails and wheels
from which depended a sort of swing, apparently adapted for moving a
person or a weight to different parts of the room without touching the
floor. In one of the lounges, not far from the window, lay a colossal
old man, wrapped in a loose robe of warm white stuff, and fast asleep.

He was a very old man, so old, indeed, as to make it hard to guess his
age from his face and his hands, the only parts visible as he lay at
rest, the vast body and limbs lying motionless under his garment, as
beneath a heavy white pall. He could not be less than a hundred years
old, but how much older than that he might really be, it was impossible
to say. What might be called the waxen period had set in, and the high
colourless features seemed to be modelled in that soft, semi-transparent
material. The time had come when the stern furrows of age had broken
up into countless minutely-traced lines, so close and fine as to seem
a part of the texture of the skin, mere shadings, evenly distributed
throughout, and no longer affecting the expression of the face as
the deep wrinkles had done in former days; at threescore and ten, at
fourscore, and even at ninety years. The century that had passed had
taken with it its marks and scars, leaving the great features in their
original purity of design, lean, smooth, and clearly defined. That last
change in living man is rare enough, but when once seen is not to be
forgotten. There is something in the faces of the very, very old which
hardly suggests age at all, but rather the vague possibility of a
returning prime. Only the hands tell the tale, with their huge, shining,
fleshless joints, their shadowy hollows, and their unnatural yellow
nails.

The old man lay quite still, breathing softly through his snowy beard.
Unorna came to his side. There was something of wonder and admiration
in her own eyes as she stood there gazing upon the face which other
generations of men and women, all long dead, had looked upon and known.
The secret of life and death was before her each day when she entered
that room, and on the very verge of solution. The wisdom hardly gained
in many lands was striving with all its concentrated power to preserve
that life; the rare and subtle gifts which she herself possessed were
daily exercised to their full in the suggestion of vitality; the most
elaborate inventions of skilled mechanicians were employed in reducing
the labour of