Moaning and sobbing Virginia threw herself upon the body of the man she loved, while Professor Maxon hurried to her side to drag her away from the soulless thing for whom he had once intended her.
Like a tigress the girl turned upon the two white men.
“You are murderers,” she cried. “Cowardly murderers. Weak and exhausted by fever he could not combat you, and so you have robbed the world of one of the noblest men that God ever created.”
“Hush!” cried Professor Maxon. “Hush, child, you do not know what you say. The thing was a monster—a soulless monster.”
At the words the girl looked up quickly at her father, a faint realization of his meaning striking her like a blow in the face.
“What do you mean?” she whispered. “Who was he?”
It was von Horn who answered.
“No god created that,” he said, with a contemptuous glance at the still body of the man at their feet. “He was one of the creatures of your father’s mad experiments—the soulless thing for whose arms his insane obsession doomed you. The thing at your feet, Virginia, was Number Thirteen.”
With a piteous little moan the girl turned back toward the body of the young giant. A faltering step she took toward it, and then to the horror of her father she sank upon her knees beside it and lifting the man’s head in her arms covered the face with kisses.
“Virginia!” cried the professor. “Are you mad, child?”