"Suzanne," I said, slowly and passionately.

She turned the sapphire ring on her finger. Presently she tired of
this, so I lifted her passive hand very gently and continued turning
the sapphire ring on her finger, slowly, to harmonize with the cadence
of our unspoken thoughts.

Towards midnight I went home, walking with great care through a new
street in Paris, paved exclusively with rose-colored blocks of air.




XII


At nine o'clock in the evening, July 31, 1900, the International
Congress was to assemble in the great lecture-hall of the Belgian
Scientific Pavilion, which adjourned the Tasmanian Pavilion, to hear
the Countess Suzanne d'Alzette read her paper on the ux.

That morning the Countess and I, with five furniture vans, had
transported the five great incubators to the platform of the
lecture-hall, and had engaged an army of plumbers and gas-fitters to
make the steam-heating connections necessary to maintain in the
incubators a temperature of 100° Fahrenheit.

A heavy green curtain hid the stage from the body of the lecture-hall.
Behind this curtain the five enormous eggs reposed, each in its