Never, never can I forget what that flood of gas-light revealed. In a row stood five large, glass-mounted incubators; behind the glass doors lay, in dormant majesty, five enormous eggs. The eggs were pale-green--lighter, somewhat, than robins' eggs, but not as pale as herons' eggs. Each egg appeared to be larger than a large hogs-head, and was partly embedded in bales of cotton-wool. Five little silver thermometers inside the glass doors indicated a temperature of 95 deg. Fahrenheit. I noticed that there was an automatic arrangement connected with the pipes which regulated the temperature. I was too deeply moved for words. Speech seemed superfluous as we stood there, hand in hand, contemplating those gigantic, pale-green eggs. There is something in a silent egg which moves one's deeper emotions--something solemn in its embryotic inertia, something awesome in its featureless immobility. I know of nothing on earth which is so totally lacking in expression as an egg. The great desert Sphinx, brooding through its veil of sand, has not that tremendous and meaningless dignity which wraps the colorless oval effort of a single domestic hen. I held the hand of the young Countess very tightly. Her fingers closed slightly. Then and there, in the solemn presence of those emotionless eggs, I placed my arm around her supple waist and kissed her. She said nothing. Presently she stooped to observe the thermometer. Naturally, it registered 95 deg. Fahrenheit. "Susanne," I said, softly. "Oh, we must go up-stairs," she whispered, breathlessly; and, picking up her silken skirts, she fled up the cellar-stairs. I turned out the gas, with that instinct of economy which early wastefulness has implanted in me, and followed the Countess Suzanne through the suite of rooms and into the small reception-hall where she had first received me. She was sitting on a low divan, head bent, slowly turning a sapphire ring on her finger, round and round. I looked at her romantically, and then-- "Please don't," she said. The correct reply to this is: "Why not?"--very tenderly spoken. "Because," she replied, which was also the correct and regular answer. "Suzanne," I said, slowly and passionately. She turned the sapphire ring on her finger. Presently she tired of this, so I lifted her passive hand very gently and continued turning the sapphire ring on her finger, slowly, to harmonize with the cadence of our unspoken thoughts. Towards midnight I went home, walking with great care through a new street in Paris, paved exclusively with rose-colored blocks of air. XII At nine o'clock in the evening, July 31, 1900, the International Congress was to assemble in the great lecture-hall of the Belgian Scientific Pavilion, which adjourned the Tasmanian Pavilion, to hear the Countess Suzanne d'Alzette read her paper on the ux.