I laughed, I say, and yet I had begun vaguely to realize that something was wrong. My head felt strangely light. I stumbled over a corner of the rug, and would have fallen out of pure weakness if I had not caught at the table for support. My respiration seemed more rapid than usual and the sweat from the slight exertion beaded my forehead. Then I forgot everything but that the Lady Allegra had begun to sing. The desire, the impulse, they had crystallized into resolution. I would wait no longer. This very night the walls of the fortress should fall, unveiling the secret of this insolent loveliness, the desire of all the world. Ah, my lady Allegra, was it chance alone that led you to choose Isolde's "Liebestod" for this the supreme enchantment? The music fell away into nothingness and I stepped forward, my hand on the knob of the folding-doors that led to the front room. I knocked twice--firmly, insistently. "Open!" I cried, and immediately the door-knob yielded to my touch. "Stop!" Dr. Gonzales stood at the hall entrance to the drawing-room. I saw something that gleamed like polished metal in his uplifted hand. Then he fell back and disappeared. It seemed as though some invisible force behind the portiere had taken sudden and irresistible possession of him. What did I care. I went forward and into the room, absolutely empty save for an upright cabinet of mahogany placed on a central pedestal. It was tall enough to conceal a person standing behind it, but it was not the Lady Allegra who came forward to meet me. "Indiman!" I said, weakly. "Esper Indiman!" "The carriage is waiting," he said. "Come." "Never!" I retorted, passionately. "You don't understand--the Lady--Allegra--" Well, I suppose I must have fainted from sheer inanition, and so Indiman explained it himself that next morning. "You had been half starved for over a week, and no wonder you keeled over. No; you can't have another mouthful of that beef-steak. You'll have to wait for luncheon." I sank back among the cushions of the couch rather resentfully. "Well, at least you can go on and tell me," I said. "Certainly. There are cranks of all degrees, as you know. It was your luck to fall into the hands of one of the king-pins of the confraternity--Dr. Ferdinand Gonzales, alias Moses the Second. "He wanted a new subject for his experiments upon the physical regeneration of the human race, and he caught you in his drag-net. It was a close call for you, old chap." "I don't understand." "You have been starving to death for ten days, and yet eating three meals a day right along. Nothing peculiar about that, eh?" "It WAS rather curious stuff. It looked like isinglass." "Perhaps it is. All I care about is the fact that the food you have been eating doesn't contain a particle of nourishment for the human system. But Moses the Second imagined that he had invented, or rather rediscovered, the one perfect nutriment for the race--nothing less than manna." "Manna!"