watching, too intent thought; so that living among so many dreams, he was
almost afraid that he should find himself waking out of yet another, and
find that the vase itself and the liquid it contained were also
dream-stuff. But no; these were real.

There was one change that surprised him, although he accepted it without
doubt, and, indeed, it did imply a wonderful efficacy, at least
singularity, in the newly converted liquid. It grew strangely cool in
temperature in the latter part of his watching it. It appeared to imbibe
its coldness from the cold, chaste moon, until it seemed to Septimius that
it was colder than ice itself; the mist gathered upon the crystal vase as
upon a tumbler of iced water in a warm room. Some say it actually gathered
thick with frost, crystallized into a thousand fantastic and beautiful
shapes, but this I do not know so well. Only it was very cold. Septimius
pondered upon it, and thought he saw that life itself was cold, individual
in its being, a high, pure essence, chastened from all heats; cold,
therefore, and therefore invigorating.

Thus much, inquiring deeply, and with painful research into the liquid
which Septimius concocted, have I been able to learn about it,--its
aspect, its properties; and now I suppose it to be quite perfect, and that
nothing remains but to put it to such use as he had so long been laboring
for. But this, somehow or other, he found in himself a strong reluctance
to do; he paused, as it were, at the point where his pathway separated
itself from that of other men, and meditated whether it were worth while
to give up everything that Providence had provided, and take instead only
this lonely gift of immortal life. Not that he ever really had any doubt
about it; no, indeed; but it was his security, his consciousness that he
held the bright sphere of all futurity in his hand, that made him dally a
little, now that he could quaff immortality as soon as he liked.