She looked me through searchingly. "I will not destroy your illusion,"
she answered, after a pause. "It is a noble and generous one. But is it
not largely based on an ascetic face, long white hair, and a moustache
that hides the cruel corners of the mouth? For the corners ARE cruel.
Some day, I will show you them. Cut off the long hair, shave the
grizzled moustache--and what then will remain?" She drew a profile
hastily. "Just that," and she showed it me. 'Twas a face like
Robespierre's, grown harder and older and lined with observation. I
recognised that it was in fact the essence of Sebastian.

Next day, as it turned out, the Professor himself insisted upon testing
lethodyne in his own person. All Nat's strove to dissuade him. "Your
life is so precious, sir--the advancement of science!" But the Professor
was adamantine.

"Science can only be advanced if men of science will take their lives in
their hands," he answered, sternly. "Besides, Nurse Wade has tried. Am
I to lag behind a woman in my devotion to the cause of physiological
knowledge?"

"Let him try," Hilda Wade murmured to me. "He is quite right. It will
not hurt him. I have told him already he has just the proper temperament
to stand the drug. Such people are rare: HE is one of them."

We administered the dose, trembling. Sebastian took it like a man, and
dropped off instantly, for lethodyne is at least as instantaneous in its
operation as nitrous oxide.

He lay long asleep. Hilda and I watched him.