"Your eyes are a clear frosty blue, and you are of rather slight build. I am merely speaking from my own experience as a doctor."
I suppose my words were not particularly gracious or well-spoken. Leonora simply nodded and leaned back from the table.
"Now, Alexis, tell me about myself," she said.
My glass now contained champagne and I decided to allow that wizard to take charge of my affairs for a time.
"Leonora, you are one of those women who visit this dull planet from time to time for reasons best known to themselves. I think you must come from Venus, or one of the asteroids; or it may be from Sirius. From the beginning you knew you were not like ordinary people."
"Alexis," she drawled, "you are boring me."
"Capital!" said Sarakoff. "Now we will descend to facts, as our friend here did. You are the most inordinately vain, ambitious, cold-hearted woman in Europe, Leonora. You value yourself before everything. You think your voice and your beauty cannot be beaten, and you are right. Now if I were to tell you that your voice and your beauty could be preserved, year after year, without any change, what would you think?"
A kind of fierce vitality sprang into her face.
"What do you mean?" she asked quietly. "Have you discovered the elixir of youth?"
He nodded. She laid her hand on his arm.