swung between fire and water,--then slowly, but resolutely, turned away. As he did so, Vasho suddenly fell on his knees, and catching at his master’s hand, implored him by eloquent signs of fear, pity and distress, not to abandon the hapless woman, thus bound and senseless, to a fate more strange and perhaps more terrible than any human being had yet devised to torture his fellow human being. Dimitrius shook off his touch impatiently, and bade him rise from his knees. “Do not pray to _me_!” he said, harshly--“Pray to your God, if you have one! _I_ have a God whose Intelligence is so measureless and so true that I know He will not punish me for spending the brain with which He has endowed me, in an effort to find out one of His myriad secrets. There was a time in this world when men knew nothing of the solar system,--now God has permitted them to know it. In the same way we know nothing of the secret of life, but shall we dare to say that God will never permit us to know? That would be blasphemy indeed! We ‘suffer fools gladly,’--we allow tricksters such as ‘mediums,’ fortune-tellers and the like to flourish on their frauds, but we give little help to the man of spiritual or psychological science, whose learning might help us to conquer disease and death! No, Vasho!--your fears have no persuasion for me!--I am thankful you are dumb! There is no more to do--we may go!” Vasho’s moonstone eyes still turned lingeringly and compassionately on the white pavilion under the Wheel of fire. He made expressive signs with his fingers, to which his master answered, almost kindly: “She will die, you think! If so, my toil is wasted--my supreme experiment is a failure! She must live. And I have sufficient faith in the _accuracies_ of God and Nature as to be almost sure she _will_! Come!” He took the reluctant Vasho by the arm and led him to the mysterious door, which swung up in its usual mysterious way at his touch. They passed out, and as the portal swung down again behind them, Dimitrius released a heavy copper bar from one side and clamped it across the whole door, fastening it with lock and key. “I do this in case you should be tempted to look in,” he said, with a stern smile to his astonished attendant. “You have been faithful and obedient so far--but you know the secret of opening this door when no bar is placed across it,--but _with_ it!--ah, my Vasho!--the devil himself may fumble in vain!”