"I looked, night after night! For hours at a time I've watched the change.... Did you ever see a body decompose? Of course not! Neither have I. But you must know in a general way what the process is. Well, this has been the exact opposite! "First, I stared at the heap of grave-mold as it shaped itself into _bones_, a skeleton. "I watched the coming of hair, a yellow tangle of it sprouting from the bare round skull, until--oh, God!--the flesh began making itself before my eyes! I couldn't bear any more. I stayed away--didn't come to the office for five days." The tube slipped from his sweating, slick fingers. Panting, Asa Gregg fumbled in the dark until he found it. Exhaustion, not self-control, flattened his voice to a deadly monotone. "I tried to think of a way out. If I could fish the corpse out of the tank! But I couldn't smuggle it out of the plant--alone. You know that, and so do I. Besides, what would be the use? If acid can't kill her, nothing can. "That's why I can't have the lid cemented on. It wouldn't do any good, either! Until three days ago, she hadn't the least color, looked as white as a ghost in the vat. A naked ghost, because there's been no resurrection for her clothing.... "I've watched her limbs grow rosy! Her lips are scarlet! Her eyes are bright--they opened yesterday--and her breasts were rising and falling--oh, almost imperceptibly--but that was last night. "And tonight--I swear it--her lips moved! She muttered my name! She turned--she'd been lying on her side--over onto her back!" The record would be badly blurred. His hand shook violently, bobbled the tube against his lips. Gregg braced his elbow against the desk. "She isn't dead," he choked. "She's only asleep ... not very soundly asleep.... She's waking up!" The invisible needle quivered as it traced several noises. There was his tortured breathing, and the clawing of his fingernails rattling over the desk. The drawer clicked as it opened. The loud click was the cocking of the revolver. "_Soon she's going to get out of that vat!_" Gregg bleated. "Jeannette, forgive me--God, forgive me--but I will not--I cannot--I dare not stay here to see her then!" * * * * * The sound of the shot brought the watchman stumbling along the corridor. He crashed against the office door. It banged open in a shower of falling frosted glass. The watchman's flashlight severed the darkness, and printed its white circle on the face of Asa Gregg. He had fallen back into the chair, a blackish gout of blood running from the hole in his temple. He stared sightlessly into the light with his eyes that were two gnarls of shrunken brown flesh, like knots in a pine board. Asa Gregg was blind ... had been, since that night three years past when the acid splashed.... * * * * *