"Ghastly," assented Caldegard. "But it wasn't the first, nor the second time that I'd chanced it. The very memory of the horrors I went through in curing myself after a course of hashish, gave me faith in my power to push this tremendous experiment to the point I had determined upon, without overshooting the mark."
"What was the mark?" inquired Dick.
"The appearance," replied Caldegard, "of certain cardiac symptoms which I expected."
"Oh, dad!" exclaimed Amaryllis. "That must have been the time when you sent for Dr. Greaves at three in the morning."
Caldegard nodded.
"For three weeks after that," went on Amaryllis indignantly, "I thought you were horribly ill."
"That, my darling," answered her father, smiling at her, "was because I was getting better."
"I've been wondering, Caldegard," said Randal, "how often and how strongly the remembrance of that incommunicable bliss cries out for an epicurean repetition of those early stages of your scientific experiment."
Caldegard laughed. "Oh, she calls, and calls pretty loud sometimes," he said. "Let her call. It's all part of the experiment. Knowledge, you see, has the sweeter voice."
Amaryllis had tears in her eyes, and for a moment the others waited on her evident desire to speak.