“Yes, oh, yes, I care,” he said quickly. “It is the temptation I fight always. Oh, you do not know what it means to feel that you are growing young! To feel your body renew, your heart beat stronger, to feel your blood take on a swifter flow, like the sap of a tree in spring! You have known the false stimulus of wine. Ah, it is a feeble thing compared with this! For this is not false, but true. This is the substance of renewal, not the fire of waste. To wake in the morning feeling that you are not older than yesterday, but younger, better able to cope and to enjoy; to travel back from fourscore to forty-five--I have done that. Do you realize what that means? It means treading the flowery way, lighted by eternal radiance, cheered by the songs of birds. And then to stop--you cannot know what it means to stop! Oh, yes, it was hard to stop; but I must stop now, or not at all this side of youth. Only at forty-five would one have the strength to stop--the age of reason and will, the age of achievement. And I need to achieve, for I still have much to do. So I stopped when I had the strength and had reached the fullness of my power. While I have work to do I shall not go further back. I shall remain as I am, and as you are, at middle age--the age of work.” He had been pacing up and down in front of Carringford as he spoke. He now halted, facing him, gazing down. “I must not linger,” he said. “These are my hours for labor, and I have so much to do, so much, it will keep me busy for a thousand years. I have only begun. Perhaps some day I may discover the elixir of wisdom. Perhaps I may yet solve the secret of genius. Perhaps”--His voice lowered--“I shall one day unveil the secret of the soul. The vial I leave with you, for I see in your mind that you cannot reach a conclusion now. On the attached label you will find instructions for its use. Think, ponder, and be sure before you set out on that flowery backward way. Be sure that you want youth again, with all that youth means, before you start back to find it.” He laid his hand in Carringford’s for an instant, and was gone. [Illustration: Drawn by O. F. Schmidt. Half-tone plate engraved by H. C. Merrill “HE BALANCED THE PRECIOUS VIAL MORE QUICKLY”] For a while Carringford did not move, but sat as one in a dream, staring at the dancing fluid gold in the bottle beneath the lamp. Youth--youth, how he had longed for that vanished gold, which he had so prodigally wasted when it was in his grasp! How often he had said, as he had said to-night, “Oh, to have one more chance, to be able to begin the game anew!” He reached out and grasped the vial, and held it up to the light. The glinting radiance in it began a wild, new dance at his touch.