“And here she goes,”—repeated Bill, wholly unconscious of his lapse. His hand is again upon the lever. His eyes are again riveted upon the private exhibit.
But the voice of the gay Gnani is heard no more by man. He makes no more appeals. His freshness is departing forever. His etheric countenance is distorted by unspeakable anguish. Despair looks from his eyes. His delicate hands, unclasped, are fallen to his sides. His head is bowed upon his breast. The foolish wise man now faces himself on all sides. He sees the past, the present, the future,—sin, suffering, and impenetrable silence.
“And here she goes,”—
Whirr-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r.
Whizz-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z.
And go she did,—and so did the Illuminat of Illinois.
Without so much as a farewell word to his Alter Ego, the gaseous and now ghastly gentleman was violently lifted from the perpendicular and suddenly bent in a curve corresponding to the arc of that electrical circle in which he revolved.
He was shot like a ball from a cannon, in and out, up and down, and round and round the Vanderhook laboratory. He was projected with fearful speed along the fatal pathway of that deadly attraction.
Words can not exploit the possibilities of electricity when centered upon a human organism, however attenuated. Up to this last moment the captive had been stirred only by his internal emotions of baffled love, and of deadly fear. Now, however, to internal agony was added outward destruction. To the convulsions of the soul were added the contortions of the body, and with every revolution of the fatal cylinder the reappearing envelope of the doomed soul was seen to be shrinking and shriveling out of all semblance to a man.