Madame Dimitrius looked at her in a scared way.
“Alive? But of course! Surely, oh, surely, you have never thought it possible——”
“That Science may kill me?” Diana finished, carelessly. “Very naturally I have thought it possible! Science sometimes kills more than it saves,—owing to our fumbling ignorance. And I wonder—supposing Dr. Féodor makes sure of his discovery—supposing he can give youth and beauty to those who are willing to go through his experiment—I wonder whether it is worth while to possess these attractions without any emotional satisfaction?”
“Then you are not satisfied?” asked Madame a little sorrowfully. “You are not happy?”
Diana moved to the open window, and with an expressive gesture, pointed to the fair landscape of lake and mountain.
“With this I am happy!” she answered. “With this I am satisfied! I feel that all this is part of Me!—it is one with me and I with it—my own blood cannot be closer to me than this air and light. But the pleasure a woman is supposed to take in her looks if she is beautiful,—the delight in pretty things for one’s self,—this does not touch me. I have lost all such sensations. When I was a girl I rather liked to look at myself in the glass,—to try contrasts of colour or wear a dainty jewelled trinket,—but now when I see in the mirror a lovely face that does not belong to me, I am not even interested!”
“But, my dear Diana, the lovely face does belong to you!” exclaimed Madame Dimitrius. “You are yourself, and no other!”
Diana looked at her rather wistfully.
“I am not so sure of that!” she said. “Now please don’t think I am losing my senses, for I’m not! I’m perfectly sane, and my thoughts are particularly clear. But Science is a terrible thing!—it is a realisation more or less of the Egyptian Sphinx—a sort of monster with the face of a spirit and the body of an animal. Science, dear Madame—please don’t look so frightened—has lately taught men more about killing each other than curing! It also tells us that nothing is, or can be lost; all sights and sounds are garnered up in the treasure-houses of air and space. The forms and faces of human creatures long dead are about us,—the aura of their personalities remains though their bodies have perished. Now I feel just as if I had unconsciously absorbed somebody else’s outward personality—and here I am, making use of it as a sort of cover to my own. My own interior self admires my outward appearance without any closer connection than that felt by anyone looking at a picture. I live within the picture—and no one seeing the picture could think it was I!”
Poor Madame Dimitrius listened to Diana’s strange analysis of herself with feelings of mingled bewilderment and terror. In her own mind she began to be convinced that her son’s “experiment” would destroy his “subject’s” mentality.