I was confused when MacDowell brought back my wandering mind by saying, “I can release Celeste from the mordant--that will be easy. But will she wish to be released? Her associates will leave her if she is kept beneath the influence of the mordant. Unreleased, she will be as forlorn as last year’s rose left blooming in a winter garden. Can she forego beauty and youth? She feeds upon her power.” “You could release her without her being aware,” I counselled. “That would be a kindly thing to do.” I felt almost fatherly toward Celeste now, I who had been twenty when she was thirty and I who was fifty when she was still thirty--at least in the record of her years as placed upon her face. “I doubt it. In fact, I believe that it would be the sheerest cruelty to give her over to the power of the years. I do not know what ravages might suddenly take place after the removal of the mordant. Celeste might suddenly become old in looks. Remember, she is fifty. To place a woman who looks thirty in a position where she would suddenly take on the lines and sagging muscles of half a century would not be advisable. “It would mean that she could not grow through twenty years of time to a place where she might accustom herself to a change both professionally and actually. If Celeste asks for the release I shall give it to her. If not, she shall remain fair to look upon when you and I are withered husks.” “Can she die?” I breathed sharply. The thought of eternal life had once seemed sweet to me. But sorrow had made her home on my doorstep. Life perpetual no longer seemed desirable. And life with a stunted spirit a damnable, awful thing. “Most assuredly she can die,” he stated. “Even as you and I. But the body will remain intact.” Celeste did not care to let the mordant release its power over her. Occasionally I saw her--occasionally I heard her sing. Beautiful as ever--her voice fresh with an eternal touch of spring--not of the present spring, but of past and remembered springs. “I do not wish the power to go,” she sighed. “I could not bear to watch my flesh shrivel as I gazed into a mirror.” Her eyes dilated with a wild terror. It was as though she envisioned such a process tearing her glory from her. “Not that I should mind so much being dead.” There was something almost childlike about her, pleading, terrified. “It seems to me that only in non-existence can I find peace.” She leaned toward me with a soft confiding. We had grown to be friends because of the secret of which we were a part. “Sometimes I grow extraordinarily weary of it all.” I shuddered to myself, for I was fifty at the time--she was sixty. The thought of supporting an ecstatic youth in the fact of remembered trouble had little lure for me. * * * * *