And when he was forty-five, and was in England on business, SHE came--a chance meeting at a big country ball, a dance, and then the keen, swift birth of love and that tragic realization of the impossibility of its fulfilment. "I saw her again--three times in all. But there was my duty to my wife and children in America. I knew that it was hopeless, and so--I said, 'Good-by.' There were tears, George. Even I . . . crumpled up a little. . . . I fled back to the States immediately--I was afraid of myself. . . . It was a long time ago, and yet-- Do you think I'm foolish to hope that she might . . . still be alive--and still remember?" "No!" I answered. "It isn't that I haven't thought of such a possibility before. But I always seemed so old. I couldn't dispel the feeling that she still had eternal youth on her side. You see, she was only twenty-one when we last met. Even now I can't picture her as any older than that." He fell back into the silence of his own thoughts. "George," he cried at last. "Why shouldn't I? I'm a comparatively young man again. Supposing I _did_ find her and could persuade her to join me--rejuvenated? . . . Even after all these years I can still remember where she lived." "Good Lord, Gran'pa!" I couldn't help exclaiming. "And why not?" he challenged with a sudden look of defiance in his eyes. "It's absurd. It isn't even proper. . . ." "_Proper_, George? You seem to suggest at times that I'm not a human being!" His face was flushed with excitement and he took huge, deep breaths, which inflated his chest almost to the point of bursting off his waistcoat buttons. Was it the spring air, the new glands, or merely old-world memories that roused him to such ecstasy? "If you're going to begin resurrecting some antiquated love affair," I said, "we shan't get to Africa for months. Which is it going to be--love or adventure?" "_Both!_" cried Gran'pa. CHAPTER X THE MASSING OF THE ANCIENTS I had been needlessly alarmed at the possibility of undue delay in leaving for Africa. Gran'pa undertook the resurrection of his fifty-year-old love affair in the same whirlwind fashion that had characterized his conversion to the glandular theory of youth. He should have been a detective, for, in less than a week, he had traced the whereabouts of a little white-haired old maid of seventy summers. Her name was Sally Rebecca Froud. In spite of the antiquity of her Christian names, I liked her from the first. She had the sweetest and daintiest manners imaginable, and when Gran'pa invited her round to dinner one evening, I saw at once that he was desperately fond of her even now.