As it was, after some hours of undisturbed reflection, I saw the stupidity of my reasoning. Nora Cazenove was natural in her boudoir, artificial in the Park. Once launched on this new stream of logic, I was carried along with a rapidity that left me gasping. Why should I, in a mere pet induced by a woman’s vagary (as I fancied it), be so ready to deny that which I had affirmed during several years? Was there aught outrageous in Karl’s telegnomic equipment? He, a man--mentally and physically almost perfect according to the precise enough laws which govern human perfection in its ideality--might well possess additional sense-activities when the lowest forms of creation are similarly gifted. There is hardly a vertebrate fish in the sea which has not, on both sides of its body, a mucous canal bristling with nerves to enable it to perceive changes in water pressure, or other unknown properties of the element in which it lives--unknown, that is, to us, but quite thoroughly known to the fish. Even man’s legitimate sense-organs are inferior to the specialized functions of certain animals. How would Nimrod’s nose compare, in the sense of smell, with the fine scent of his favorite hound, or the range of my lady’s vision with that of the very much smaller eye of a vulture? As for hearing, ask some friend, learned in anatomy, to discourse to you upon the higher sensitiveness and comparative size of the cochlea, or snail-shell, formation in the internal ear of a desert-bred animal as contrasted with the same appliance in the _genus homo_. This branch of research chastens and humbles the mere man. While dressing early for dinner, so as to reach the vestibule in good time to welcome Hooper, I wondered how Karl had passed the day. “Worn out” last night, he expected to be “even more weary” when next we met. And then an explanation of his words suggested itself which caused a sudden nerve-shock similar, in some respects, to that felt by the man who, in a crowded house, slept on a made-up bed over the bath, and, awaking drowsily, pulled the string of the shower-bath when he wanted hot water in the morning. “By Jove!” I yelled, “I have it!” “Qu’ est-ce que vous avez trouvé, m’sieu’?” demanded the startled valet who was arranging my studs. I suppose the civil young Frenchman thought I was ill, but I reassured him, though my excitement must have made him believe that I was on the verge of lunacy. Karl was using his magnetic force continuously in order to preserve Nora from the torturing consequences of her love for him. That explained her attitude in the Park. He had beaten down in her what he termed “resistance.” She was quite passive, utterly permeated with his influence. And Maggie? In all probability she, too, was unconsciously benefiting by her affinity to this human loadstone, while he was wearing himself out, actually consuming himself, in the fierce persistence of the effort to spare them further suffering.