"Marry! I! At seventy! My dear Vesey, you are a very old friend, and
privileged to say what others dare not, or you would offend me. If I had
ever thought of marrying again I should have done so two or three years
after my wife's death, when I was in the fifties, and not waited till
now, when my end, if not actually near, is certainly well in sight.
Though I daresay there are plenty of women who would marry me--even
me--at my age,--knowing the extent of my income. But do you think I
would take one of them, knowing in my heart that it would be a mere
question of sale and barter? Not I!--I could never consent to sink so
low in my own estimation of myself. I can honestly say I have never
wronged any woman. I shall not begin now."

"I don't see why you should take that view of it," murmured Sir Francis
placidly. "Life is not lived nowadays as it was when you first entered
upon your career. For one thing, men last longer and don't give up so
soon. Few consider themselves old at seventy. Why should they? There's a
learned professor at the Pasteur Institute who declares we ought all to
live to a hundred and forty. If he's right, you are still quite a young
man."

Helmsley rose from his chair with a slightly impatient gesture.

"We won't discuss any so-called 'new theories,'" he said. "They are only
echoes of old fallacies. The professor's statement is merely a modern
repetition of the ancient belief in the elixir of life. Shall we go in?"

Vesey got up from his lounging position more slowly and stiffly than
Helmsley had done. Some ten years younger as he was, he was evidently
less active.