hole body was trembling as with the ague.

"Professor Barter," she said at last. "I am terribly confused, and
most awfully frightened. What has happened here? What dreadful thing
has so awfully changed Lee? I talk to him and he answers nothing that
I understand. Is it some weird fever? At this moment I have the
feeling that that brute Manape understands more perfectly than Lee,
and the idea is horrible! I love Lee, Professor. See, he hears me say
it, yet I cannot tell from his expression what he thinks. Does he
despise me for so freely admitting my love? Has he any feeling about
it at all? Has his mind completely gone?"

"Yes," said Barter, with a semblance of a smile on his lips, "his mind
has completely gone. But it is only temporary, my dear. You forget
that I am perhaps the world's greatest living medical man, and that I
can do things no other man can do. I shall restore Lee wholly to
you--when the time comes. It is not well to hasten things in cases of
this kind. One never knows but that great harm may be done."

"But I can nurse him. I can care for him and love him, and help to
make him well."

* * * * *

Barter looked away from Ellen, his eyes apparently focussed on a spot
somewhere in the air between Apeman and Manape.

"Would that be satisfactory to Bentley, I wonder?" he said musingly,
yet Bentley recognized it as a question addressed to him. Bentley
looked at the girl, but her eyes were fixed--alight with love which
was still filled with questioning--on Apeman. Bentley shook his head,
and Barter laughed a little.

"You know, Miss Estabrook," he went on, "that a strange malady like
that which appears to have attacked Lee Bentley should be studied
carefully, in order that the observations of a savant may be given to
the world so that such maladies may be effectually combatted in
future. This is one reason why I do not hasten."

"But you are using a sick man as you would use a rabbit in a
laboratory experiment!" she cried. "Can't you see that there are
things not even you should do? Don't you understand that some things
should be left entirely in the hands of God?"

"I do not concede that!" retorted Barter. "God makes terrible mistakes
sometimes--as witness cretins, mongoloid idiots, criminals, and the
like. I know about these things better than you do, my dear, and you
must trust me."

"Oh, if I only knew what was right. Poor Lee. You lashed him so, and
his body is aw