grafted members that they had with their own.  I have a monkey who had only one eye when he came.  Now he has two—­they aren’t a good color match, but he sees as well with one as the other.  When these ideas are perfected it will be possible, perhaps, to make old people young.  The secret is absolute cleanliness and the accuracy in joining of a Chippendale or an Adams.  So you see,” he smiled, “that in a way you and I are chasing the same ambition—­how to express the thing imagined through perfection of technique.”

“Are you the only man working along these lines?”

“Heavens, no!  Aristotle probably believed in animal grafting.  But I think that, owing to a natural talent for doing close and accurate work with my hands, I have gone farther than anybody else.  What gave you the impulse to be a sculptor, Barbs?”

She laughed gayly.  “The statues in the Metropolitan that have lost their arms and heads and legs.  I felt very sorry for them.  I was very young and foolish, and I invented a game to play.  I’d select a statue that needed an arm, say, and then I’d hunt among the other statues for an arm that would fit, or for a head or whatever else was missing.  Through playing that game I got the idea of making whole statues from the beginning and not bothering with fragments.”

“And to think,” said Dr. Ferris, “that we have failed to understand each other.  Why, Barbs, your ambition is a direct lineal descendant of mine.  It was a maimed marble that showed you your life’s work.  It was a maimed child that showed me mine.  It seems that at heart we are both menders.”

“I began on dolls,” said Barbara.

“And I began on guinea-pigs.”

A footman entered with whiskey and soda on a tray.  Barbara rose.

“Shall I pour you a drink?”

“A very little one, please.”

She poured him his drink, and once more seated herself at his feet.

“After I graduated from the P. & S.,” said Dr. Ferris, “I did ambulance work for two years, accidents, births, fires.  I was ambitious to learn, and worked myself sick.  One morning, after I’d been all night bringing a most reluctant young Polack into the world, I was called to the house of a world-famous man in East Thirty-fourth Street.  The house was full of servants mad with grief and fright.  The man and his wife had gone out of town, and their son, a beautiful boy about ten years old, had got himself run over by a truck.  His governess, I gathered, a German fool, had been in some way directly responsible.  But that is the small end of the matter.  The boy’s legs were horribly crushed and mangled.  It seemed to me that if his life was to be saved, they must come off at once.  The family’s physician was the famous old Doctor Watson Bell.  I sent for him.  He didn’t come at once, and when I had waited as long as I dared, I took upon my own shoulders the very heavy responsibility of operating.  I put the child under ether, and with the help of one