alight to welcome his return with his bride. "Even the skies have
illuminated," said the flatterer. Under Capricorn, two negro
lovers, daring the wild beasts and evil spirits, for love of one
another, crouched together in a cane brake where the fire-flies
hovered. "That is our star," they whispered, and felt strangely
comforted by the sweet brilliance of its light.

The master mathematician sat in his private room and pushed
the papers from him. His calculations were already finished. In
a small white phial there still remained a little of the drug that
had kept him awake and active for four long nights. Each day,
serene, explicit, patient as ever, he had given his lecture to his
students, and then had come back at once to this momentous
calculation. His face was grave, a little drawn and hectic from
his drugged activity. For some time he seemed lost in thought.
Then he went to the window, and the blind went up with a click.
Half way up the sky, over the clustering roofs, chimneys and
steeples of the city, hung the star.

He looked at it as one might look into the eyes of a brave
enemy. "You may kill me," he said after a silence. "But I can
hold you--and all the universe for that matter--in the grip of this
little brain. I would not change. Even now."

He looked at the little phial. "There will be no need of
sleep again," he said. The next day at noon--punctual to the
minute, he entered his lecture theatre, put his hat on the end of
the table as his habit was, and carefully selected a large piece of
chalk. It was a joke among his students that he could not lecture
without that piece of chalk to fumble in his fingers, and once he