yearning for perfection after your kind. I--I can gife it you. You can
trust me; I am ready. I can gif you your vish, t'e vish of efery normal
voman. Science--t'at is I--can make you t'e most beautiful being in t'e
vorld!"

Another Sunday school lesson! Miss Coleman and her unforgotten lecture
upon beauty flashed upon my mind. But this man was promising me more than
she had done, and his every word was measured. What was the mystery? What
had he to say to me?

"T'e most beautiful--voman--in t'e vorld," he went on in a slow, cadenced
whisper. "Do you vish it?"

His glittering eyes held mine again. No, he was not jesting at my expense;
rather he seemed waiting with anxiety for me to make some decision upon
which much depended. He was in very serious earnest.

But was ever a question more absurd? Who of women would not wish it? But
to get the wish--ah, there's a different matter! I thought he must be
crazed by over-study, and I could only sit and stare at him, open-mouthed.

"Listen!" he went on more rapidly, as if to forestall objection. "You are
scholar, too, a little. You know how Nature vorks, how men aid her in her
business. Man puts t'e mot'er of vinegar into sweet cider and it is
vinegar. T'e fermenting germs of t'e brewery chemist go in vit' vater and
hops and malt, and t'ere is beer. T'e bacilli of bread, t'e yeast,
svarming vit millions of millions of little spores, go into t'e
housevife's dough, and it is bad bread; but t'at is not t'e fault of t'e
bacilli--mein Gott, no!--for vit' t'e bacilli t'e baker makes goot bread.
T'e bacilli of butter, of cheese--you haf studied t'em. T'e experimenter