“Nothing is impossible!” he said. “Whatsoever the brain of a man conceives in thought can be born in deed. Otherwise there would be a flaw in the mathematics of the Universe, which is a thing utterly inconceivable.” He paused,—then went on. “I have told you all that you wished to know. Are you satisfied?”
She looked at him, and a faint smile lifted the corners of her mouth.
“If you are satisfied, I am,” she replied. “What I seem to understand is this,—if you succeed in your experiment I shall feel and look younger than I do now,—we will leave the ‘beauty’ part out of it,—and if you fail, the ‘cells’ you have begun to charge with your mysterious compound, will disintegrate, and there’ll be an end of me?”
“You have put the case with perfect accuracy,” he said. “That is so.”
“Very well! I am prepared!”—and she went to the table desk where she usually worked—“and now I’ll go on deciphering Latin script.”
She seated herself, and, turning over the papers she had left, began to write.
An odd sense of compunction came over him as he looked at her and realised her courage, patience, and entire submission to his will, and yet—his careful and vigilant eye noted the improved outlines of cheek and chin, the delicate, almost imperceptible softening of the lately thin and angular profile,—and the foretaste of a coming scientific triumph was stronger in him than any other human feeling. Nevertheless she was a woman, and——
Moved by a sudden impulse, he approached and bent over her as she worked.
“Diana,” he said, very softly and kindly—“you will forgive me if I have seemed to you callous, or cruel?”
Her heart beat quickly—she was annoyed with herself at the nervous tremor which ran through her from head to foot.