The humor of the situation both thoroughly understood and enjoyed, but the impassioned motive was entirely beyond them.
As I entered the room the strong, pungent odor of chemicals warned me I had intruded the sanctified laboratory of Centauri, and to my chagrin, the old gentleman was there, polite, frigid, and deeply engrossed in a table crowded with queer little vials and tubes.
The walls of the room were lined with shelves filled with glass jars containing strange fluids and powders. There were huge glass mortar bowls, tall crystal pipes and cylinders, and several long, narrow tables. Over one a cloth had been hastily thrown.
“You find me deep in my great work,” a sweet voice murmured near me.
I glanced down at the lovely speaker, her arms were bared to the shoulders, and one was stained with a dull-red color.
Centauri advised her to cease work and entertain the stranger.
She shrugged her shoulders and turned at once to the covered table and there followed a whispered argument which was perfectly audible to me (one always overhears). He cautioned her against overconfidence, adding that the stranger might lose the desire to teach the science she wished to learn. For several seconds she stood undecided, stubborn, then suddenly courtesied deeply and turned to me. “For once pleasure lures me,” she murmured, smiling divinely. “I will be with you in a few moments.”
She raised her arm as though to give some last direction to her father, it was the stained arm, but in my ardor I caught and passionately kissed it. The acid was glazed, sticky, the odor sickening. I turned from her, repelled, with a keen desire to get out of the place.
She laughed merrily as she hastened away, and Centauri twitted me that I changed color at the sight of life’s fluid, but was able to endure the horrors of the polar regions. He considered that I possessed a remarkable constitution, and informed me his daughter’s work was for the prolongation of life.
“She seeks the elixir of eternal youth and health.”