“Yes. Of the _outward_ change. But of the inward, even _you_ know nothing!” “Do I not? And will you not tell me?” She smiled strangely. “It will be difficult. But as your ‘subject’ I suppose I am bound to tell----” He made a slight, deprecatory gesture. “Not unless you wish.” “I have no wishes,” she replied. “The matter is, like everything else, quite indifferent to me. You have guessed rightly as to the causes of my coming to you--my father and mother were much disappointed at my losing all my ‘chances’ as the world puts it, and failing to establish myself in a respectable married position--I was a drag on their wheel, though they are both quite old people,--so I relieved them of my presence in the only way I could think of to make them sure they were rid of me for ever. Then--on the faith of your advertisement I came to you. You know all the rest--and you also know that the ‘experiment’ for which you wanted ‘a woman of mature years’ is--so far--successful. But----” “There are no buts,” interrupted Dimitrius. “It is more than fulfilling my hopes and dreams!--and I foresee an ultimate triumph!--a discovery which shall revivify and regenerate the human race! You too--surely you must enjoy the sense of youth--the delight of seeing your own face in the mirror----?” Diana shrugged her shoulders. “It leaves me cold!” she said. “It’s a pretty face--quite charming, in fact!--but it seems to me to be the face of somebody else! I don’t feel in myself that I possess it! And the ‘sense of youth’ you speak of has the same impression--it is somebody else’s sense of youth!” Her eyes glittered in the moonlight, and her voice, low and intensely musical, had a curious appealing note in it. “Féodor Dimitrius, _it is not human_!” He was vaguely startled by her look and manner. “Not human?----” he repeated, wonderingly. “No--not human! This beauty, this youth which you have recreated in me, are not human! They are a portion of the air and the sunlight--of the natural elements--they make my body buoyant, my spirit restless. I long for some means to lift myself altogether from the gross earth, away from heavy and cloddish humanity, for which I have not a remnant of sympathy! I am not of it!--I am changed,--and it is you that have changed me. Understand me well, if you can!--You have filled me with a strange force which in its process of action is beyond your knowledge,--and by its means I have risen so far above you that I hardly know you!” She uttered these strange words calmly and deliberately in an even tone of perfect sweetness. A sudden and uncontrollable impulse of anger seized him. “That is not true!” he said, almost fiercely. “You know me for your master!” She bent her head, showing no offence. “Possibly! For the present.” And again she looked lingeringly, gravely out towards the sea. “Shall we go in now?”