lay at the bottom of a second jar, exuding an ooze of viscid strings.

"T'at,"--he spat the word out--"is also sea anemone. It is diseased; it is
an ugly animal."

"The poor thing's dying," said Helen, coming to his side. "There ought to
have been some of the green seaweed, Ulva, in the water. Wouldn't that
have saved it?"

"Ugliness,"--Darmstetter disregarded the question--"is disease; it is bat
organism; t'e von makes t'e ot'er. T'e ugly plant or animal is diseased,
or else it is botched, inferior plant or animal. It is t'e same vit' man
and voman; t'ey are animals. T'e ugly man or voman is veak, diseased or
inferior. On t'e ot'er hand,"--I felt what was coming by the sudden oiling
of his squeak--"t'e goot man or voman, t'e goot human organism, mus' haf
beauty. Not so?" Again he rubbed his hands.

Helen glanced mischievously at me, as a half-repressed snort interrupted
his dissertation.

The woman in the fur cap, who might have been a teacher improving odd
hours, had knocked up the barrel of her microscope; she gazed through the
window at the dazzling Hudson. Next her a thin, sallow girl, whose dark
complexion contrasted almost weirdly with her yellow hair, slashed at a
cake of paraffine, her deep-set eyes emitting a spark at every fall of the
razor. The other student, a young woman with the heavy figure of middle
age, went steadily on, dropping paraffine shavings into some fluid in a
watch crystal. With a long-handled pin she fished out minute somethings
left by the dissolving substance, dropping these upon other crystals--some
holding coloured fluids--and finally upon glass slides. She worked as if