“I will!”
She passed on, up the staircase, and went straight to her own rooms. It was plain she had forgotten nothing, and that she had all her senses about her. As Dimitrius threw open the door of her little salon she turned on the threshold and fully confronted him.
“Thank you!” she said. “I hope you are satisfied that your experiment has succeeded?”
He was pale to the lips, and his eyes glowed with suppressed fire,—but he answered calmly:
“I am more than satisfied if—if you are well!”
“I am very well,” she replied, smiling. “I shall never be ill. You ought to know that if you believe in your own discovery. You ought to know that I am no longer made of mortal clay, ‘subject to all the ills that flesh is heir to.’ Your science has filled me with another and more lasting form of life!”
He was silent, standing before her with head bent, like some disgraced school-boy.
“Good-night!” she said, then, in a gentler tone—“I do not know how long I have been the companion of your ‘Ordeal by Fire!’—I suppose I ought to be hungry and thirsty, but I am not. To breathe has been to me sufficient nourishment—yet for the sake of appearances you had better let Vasho—poor frightened Vasho!—bring me food as usual. I shall be ready for him in an hour.”
She motioned him away, and closed the door. As she disappeared, a light seemed to vanish with her and the dark entresol grew even darker. He went downstairs in a maze of bewilderment, dazzled by her beauty and conscious of her utter indifference,—and stood for a moment at the open door of the loggia, looking out at the still, dark loveliness of the summer evening.
“And so it is finished!” he said to himself. “All over! A completed triumph and marvel of science! But—what have I made of her? She is not a woman! Then—what is she?”