“I imagine nothing,” she answered, quietly. “The things you teach are beyond all imagination! But see!--I have signed myself and my services away to you for a certain time, and as you have yourself said, you did not engage me merely to copy old Latin script. What you really want of me is, as I begin to understand, just what the vivisector wants with the animal he experiments upon. If this is so, I offer no opposition. I am not afraid of death--for I am out of love with life. But I want to know your aims--I want to understand the actual thing you are striving for. I shall be better able to help you if I know. You put me through one test yesterday--you saw for yourself that I had no fear of the death or life properties of the thing I took from your hand without any hesitation--I have not even spoken of the amazing and terrifying sensations it gave me--I am ready to take it again at any moment. You have a willing servant in me--but, as I say, I feel I could help you more if I knew the ultimate end for which you work,--and you must trust me!” He listened attentively to every word,--charmed with the silvery softness of her voice and its earnest yet delicate inflections. “I _do_ trust you!” he said, when she had ceased speaking. “If I did not, you would not be here a day. I trusted you from the moment I saw you. If I had not, I should never have engaged you. So be satisfied on that score. For the rest--well!--I confess I have hesitated to tell you more than (as you put it) seemed necessary for you to know,--the old fear and the narrow miscomprehension of woman is still inherent in me, as in all of my sex, though I do my best to eliminate it,--and I have thought that perhaps if I told you all my intentions with regard to yourself, you might, at the crucial moment, shrink back and fail me----” “When I shrink from anything you wish me to do, or fail in my undertaking to serve you loyally, I give you leave to finish me off in any way you please!” she said, calmly--“and without warning!” He smiled--but his eyes were sombre with thought. “Sit down,” he said, and signed to her to take a chair near the window. “I will tell you as much as I can--as much as I myself know. It is briefly said.” He watched her closely, as, in obedience to his wish, she seated herself, and he noted the new and ardent brilliance in her eyes which gave them a look of youthful and eager vitality. Then he drew up another chair and sat opposite to her. Outside the window the garden had a wintry aspect--the flowerbeds were empty,--the trees were leafless, and the summits of the distant Alps peered white and sharp above a thick, fleece-like fog which stretched below.