"We are here," replied his friend steadily, "to make that theory fact. You must direct me. Call the interruptions as you want them." The doctor crossed to the couch, and drawing aside the blanket stood looking down at Lola. In that moment all that this child of his meant to him came into his mind, and the thought gave him strength. The fear and grief died, and in their place came firmness, confidence. He knelt and deftly unfastened her dress and bared her girlish breast, then crossing to the table took in each hand a glass electrode connected by long wires to the powerful machine, and slowly returned to where his daughter lay. "Now, Paul!" A touch of Dr. Crossett's practised hand and the great machine came to life. Back and forth in the coil violet sparks jumped, flashing, sparkling. From the electrodes in his strong hands a million tiny specks of light sprang angrily, and when for a moment he held them close together these specks became a solid bar of violet light, almost a flame. The noise was deafening, the solid crash of the leaping current, as Dr. Crossett gradually moved his index up to its full strength, rang through the little room and echoed back from the walls, the vibrations so close that to any but a practiced ear they sounded like one steady roar. Once again he paused beside the couch, and an electrode in each hand, the violet light dancing all about him, he raised his eyes in a short prayer. "God help me," he said, his voice half buried in the riot of sound. "Don't hold my pride against me. I ask it, not as the inventor, but as the father." He did not speak again, nor did the friend who stood watchfully beside the spluttering, crashing machine. Three times he held the electrodes to her body, one over her heart, one against her back, but there was no movement, no sign of life. The leaping sparks seemed to pass through her tender frame, but she lay there still, with that awful stillness of the dead. The man, working over her, the father no longer, but the physician, the inventor, did not hesitate. Again and again she was enfolded in the bright beams of violet light. Again and again he held the leaping current to her heart, and at last, when, for what seemed to be the hundredth time he drew back and looked at her, his whole body suddenly stiffened, a hoarse cry burst from him, and he fell crashing to the floor. Dr. Crossett shut off the current and sprang to him. He had fainted, and turning from him to Lola, Paul Crossett saw what the father had seen. A soft color slowly stealing back into that white face and a slow, steady rising and falling of her breast as her heart began again to beat. CHAPTER IV BROUGHT TO LIFE