In ten years she was just as lovely as when the mordant was first given her. Like the morning glory vine, she took on new splendors. Each new blossoming of beauty added itself to the sum total. People commenced talking of her fadeless charm. When she came to sing in Youngstown I interviewed her and found her full of joy over the mordant--full of eager queries as to the welfare of her benefactor. Ecstatic over the fact that not one wrinkle detracted from the youthful contour of her face. “Not a gray hair, my friend. I am still good to look upon. The men adore me. Do you not adore me? But why does the great MacDowell not give to others what he has given to me? Is he not satisfied with his results on me, his test tube?” She preened herself before the mirror. “He is busy with other things at present,” I stated. “There are little things like wars to be thwarted and plagues to be harnessed. Nevertheless, he is interested in the success of the mordant. But he is slow in his decisions.” I myself am impetuous in my nature--wish things to come to a head speedily. Never could I have watched through the years the outworking of experiments as did this MacDowell. I could very well understand Celeste’s attitude toward him. “When he sees so glorious a creature as myself, how can he help but think his experiment a good one?” she seemed to say. In five years more of time--fifteen in all--there was a real change in the star. Her voice, while in some respects lovelier--seemed to lack a certain modernity. It remained impervious to the changes that come from without--from the great down-pressing of events. There was a certain quality to her acting which was no longer the fashion. Yet reputation bore her along at the same high place in the world’s estimation. She was charming--unbelievably so. Newspaper syndicates used her name at the head of beauty columns. They paid handsomely for the privilege of doing so. She endorsed cold creams and face powders. “I need none of them,” she confided to me, laughing almost wickedly. “But for those poor people who have not the mordant there is no other hope. I give it to them. The powders and the paints, the creams and eyebrow pencils may help for a while. But see--not a wrinkle--not a gray hair.” Of course her beauty was world-talk. With that I was familiar, but not with another characteristic of which I was soon to hear. It seemed that Celeste was becoming known for her sadness--that her face, so radiant in years past, had almost a look of despair upon it. So I was not surprised when she sent for me, on one of her last appearances in Youngstown, to make inquiries concerning the mordant. “There is something within me which does not grow. I am a creature of utter loneliness. I am not at home with the youngsters of the day. I am not at home with my peers in age. I am bound to the past by some hidden force that will not let me go. Yet I keep a look of youth.”