“You will think so again and yet again,” he said, coolly. “And you _may_ die! That’s all I have to say about it!” She stood immovable, bathed, as it were, in the rosy radiance exhaled by the slow and now almost solemn movement of the great Wheel. She thought of the kindliness of Professor Chauvet,--his plain and unadorned proposal of marriage,--his simple admission that he had “grown fond” of her,--his offer of his name and position united to a house in Paris and ten thousand a year!--and contrasted all this with the deliberate, calculating callousness of the man beside her, lost to every consideration but the success or failure of his “experiment,”--and a passionate resentment began to burn in her soul. But she said nothing. She had rushed upon her own fate,--there was no way out of it now. He moved away from her to unlock the tiny fairy-like shrine, which concealed the slow dropping of the precious liquid mysteriously distilled by the unknown process which apparently involved so much vast mechanism, and, placing a small phial under the delicate tube from which the drops fell at long, slow intervals, waited till one, glittering like a rare jewel, was imprisoned within it. She watched him, with more disdain than fear,--and her eyes were brilliant and almost scornful as he raised himself from his stooping position and faced her. The pale blue dress she wore was transformed by the rosy light around her into a rich purple, and as she stood fixedly regarding him there was something so proud and regal in her aspect that he paused, vaguely astonished. “What is the matter with you?” he asked. “Are you angry?” “Who am I that I should be angry?” she retorted. “I am only your slave!” He frowned. “Are you going to play the capricious woman at this late hour and show temper?” he said, impatiently. “I am in no humour for reproaches. You promised loyalty----” “Have I broken my promise?” she demanded. “No--not yet! But you look as if you might break it!” She gave a slight, yet expressive gesture of contempt. “What a poor thing you are as a man, after all!” she exclaimed. “Here, in the presence of the vast forces you have bent to your use,--here, with your ‘subject,’ a mere woman, entirely at your disposal, you doubt!--you disbelieve in my sworn word, which is as strong as all your science, perhaps stronger! Come!--you look like a conspirator who has extracted poison from some mysterious substance, and who is longing to try it on a victim! Do you want me to take it now?” He gazed at her with a sudden sense of fear. Almost her courage overmastered his will. There was something austere and angelic in that slight figure with the rosy waves of vapour playing about it and turning its azure draperies to royal purple, and for the first time he wondered whether there was not something deliberately brutal in his treatment of her. Rallying his self-possession he answered: “When we are outside this place you can take it, if you will----”