something
that resembled a human head, covered with long golden hair, but it was
horrible; it was an uncouth mass, without eyes or nose or mouth. The
colour was a kind of sickly pink, and it was almost transparent. There
was a very slight movement in it, rhythmical and slow. It was living too.

Then quickly Arthur removed the covering from all the other jars but one;
and in a flash of the eyes they saw abominations so awful that Susie had
to clench her fists in order not to scream. There was one monstrous thing
in which the limbs approached nearly to the human. It was extraordinarily
heaped up, with fat tiny arms, little bloated legs, and an absurd squat
body, so that it looked like a Chinese mandarin in porcelain. In another
the trunk was almost like that of a human child, except that it was
patched strangely with red and grey. But the terror of it was that
at the neck it branched hideously, and there were two distinct heads,
monstrously large, but duly provided with all their features. The
features were a caricature of humanity so shameful that one could hardly
bear to look. And as the light fell on it, the eyes of each head opened
slowly. They had no pigment in them, but were pink, like the eyes of
white rabbits; and they stared for a moment with an odd, unseeing glance.
Then they were shut again, and what was curiously terrifying was that the
movements were not quite simultaneous; the eyelids of one head fell
slowly just before those of the other. And in another place was a ghastly
monster in which it seemed that two bodies had been dreadfully entangled
with one another. It was a creature of nightmare, with four arms and four
legs, and this one actually moved. With a peculiar motion it crawled
along the bottom of the great receptacle in which it was kept, towards
the three persons who looked at it. It seemed to wonder what they did.
Susie started back with fright, as it raised itself on its four legs and
tried to reach up to them.

Susie turned away and hid her face. She could not look at those ghastly
counterfeits of humanity. She was terrified and ashamed.

'Do you understand what this means?' said Dr Porhoet to Arthur, in an
awed voice. 'It means that he has discovered the secret of life.'

'Was it for these vile monstrosities that Margaret was sacrificed in all
her loveliness?'

The two men looked at one another with sad, wondering eyes.

'Don't you remember that he talked of the manufacture of human beings