His calculations were already finished. In
a small white phial there still remained a little of the drug that
had kept him awake and active for four long nights. Each day,
serene, explicit, patient as ever, he had given his lecture to his
students, and then had come back at once to this momentous
calculation. His face was grave, a little drawn and hectic from
his drugged activity. For some time he seemed lost in thought.
Then he went to the window, and the blind went up with a click.
Half way up the sky, over the clustering roofs, chimneys and
steeples of the city, hung the star.

He looked at it as one might look into the eyes of a brave
enemy. "You may kill me," he said after a silence. "But I can
hold you--and all the universe for that matter--in the grip of this
little brain. I would not change. Even now."

He looked at the little phial. "There will be no need of
sleep again," he said. The next day at noon--punctual to the
minute, he entered his lecture theatre, put his hat on the end of
the table as his habit was, and carefully selected a large piece of
chalk. It was a joke among his students that he could not lecture
without that piece of chalk to fumble in his fingers, and once he
had been stricken to impotence by their hiding his supply. He came
and looked under his grey eyebrows at the rising tiers of young
fresh faces, and spoke with his accustomed studied commonness of
phrasing. "Circumstances have arisen--circumstances beyond my
control," he said and paused, "which will debar me from completing
the course I had designed. It would seem, gentlemen, if I may put
the thing clearly and briefly, that--Man has lived in vain."

The students glanced at one another. Had they heard aright?
Mad? Raised eyebrows and grinning lips there were, but one or two
faces remained intent upon his calm grey-fringed face. "It will be
interesting," he was saying, "to devote this morning to an
exposition, so far as I can make it clear to you, of the
calculations that have led me to this conclusion. Let us assume--"

He turned towards the blackboard, meditating a diagram in the
way that was usual to him. "What was that about 'lived in vain?'"
whispered one student to another. "Listen," said the other,
nodding towards the lecturer.

And presently they began to understand.

That night the star rose later, for its proper eastward motion
had carried it some way across Leo towards Virgo, and its
brightness was