"Absolutely; I svear it. T'e most perfectly beautiful voman in t'e vorld.
Mein Gott, yes. How not? Never vas t'ere yet a perfectly beautiful voman.
Not von. All have defects; none fulfills t'e ideal. You? You vill look
like yourself. I do not miracles. T'e same soul vill look out of your
eyes. You vill be perfect, but of your type. T'e same eyes, more bright;
t'e same hair, more lustrous and abundant; t'e same complexion clear and
pure; t'e same voman as she might have been if t'e race had gone on
defeloping a hundred t'ousand years. Look you. Some admire blondes; some
brunettes. You are not a Svede to be white, an Italian to be black. You
are a brown American. You shall be t'e most beautiful brown American t'at
efer lifed. And you shall be first. Vit' you as an example we shall
convince t'e vorld. Ve shall accomplish in t'ree generations t'e vork of a
hundred t'ousand years of defelopment. How vill humanity bless us if we
can raise, out of t'e slums and squalor, out of t'e crooked and blind and
degraded, out of t'e hospitals and prisons, t'e spawning dregs of humanity
and make t'em perfect! T'ey shall valk t'e eart' like gods, rejoicing in
t'eir strengt'. No more failures, no more abnormalities. Nature's vork
hastened by science, aeons of veary vaiting and slow efolution forestalled
by--by me!"

The little Professor stood erect, his eye fixed on mine, his mien
commanding. I had never looked on man so transfigured.

The thought was intoxicating me, driving me wild. I tried to think, to
struggle against the tide that was sweeping me away. He seemed to be
hypnotizing me with his grave, uncanny eye. I could not move, I could not
speak.

"You may ask," Darmstetter went on--though I had not thought of asking--
"if t'e beauty vould be hereditable; if as an acquired characteristic, it