ou, and I will destroy
your high places.'"

His voice rose in passion, his face worked in anger, and he shook his
clenched fists at an imaginary universe. So this man of peace was a
destroyer, after all! Gerald aroused him. Again he asked pardon. Mila
was nowhere to be seen, and with a sinking at the heart new to his
buoyant temperament, Gerald bade the magician good night. It was
arranged that he would leave the next day, for, like Milton, he was
haunted by "the ghost of a linen decency." But that night he did not
sleep, and no sound of music came to his ears from Mila's chamber. Once
he tried to open his window. It was nailed down.

A gray day greeted his tired eyes. In an hour he was bidding his friends
good-by and thanking them for their hospitality. He had hoped that Mila
would accompany him a few steps on his long journey, but she made no
sign beyond a despairing look at her uncle, who was surly, as if he had
felt the reaction from too prolonged a debauch of the spirit. Gerald lit
his pipe, kissed the hand of Mila with emphasis, and parted from them.
He had not gone a hundred yards before he heard soft footsteps tracking
him. He turned and was disappointed to see that it was only Karospina,
who came up to him, breathing heavily, and in his catlike eyes the fixed
expression of monomania. He stuttered, waving his arms aloft.

"The time is at hand and the end of all things shall be accomplished.
You shall return for the great night. You shall hear of it in the world.
Tell K. that I said _no!_ He must be with us at the transfiguration of
all things, when mankind shall go up the spiral road of perfection."

Gerald Shannon fairly ran to escape knowing more about the universal
panacea. And when he turned for the last time the sea and tower and man
were blotted out by wavering mists of silver.

III

THE FIERY CHARIOT

The young man soon heard of Karospina's project. A week before the event
the newspapers began describing the experiments of the new Russian
wonder-worker, but treated the matter with calm journalistic
obliviousness to any but its most superficial aspects. A scientific
pyrotechnist was a novelty, particularly as the experimentings were to
be given with the aid of a newly discovered gas. Strange rumours of
human levitations, of flying machines seen after dark at unearthly
heights, were printed. This millionnaire, who had expended fortunes in
trying to accomplish what Maxim and Langley had failed in a