flashed dangerously. 

"Humanity! What the deuce is humanity? Science! Dolts! Just individuals over and over again! Humanity is made for preachers to whom it means the blindly credulous. Humanity is made for the predatory rich to whom it speaks in terms of dollars and cents. Humanity is made for the politician to whom it signifies collective power to be used to his advantage. What is humanity? Nothing! Thank God that crude illusion doesn't last! What a grown man worships is truth--knowledge--science--light--the rending of the veil and the pushing back of the shadow. Knowledge, the juggernaut! There is death in our own ritual. We must kill--dissect--destroy--and all for the sake of discovery--the worship of the ineffable light. The goddess Science demands it. We test a doubtful poison by killing. How else? No thought for self--just knowledge--the effect must be known." His voice trailed off in a kind of temporary exhaustion, and Georgina shuddered slightly. 

"But this is horrible, Al! You shouldn't think of it that way!" Clarendon cackled sardonically, in a manner which stirred odd and repugnant associations in his sister's mind. 

"Horrible? You think what _I_ say is horrible? You ought to hear Surama! I tell you, things were known to the priests of Atlantis that would make you drop dead of fright if you heard a hint of them. Knowledge was knowledge a hundred thousand years ago, when our especial forebears were shambling about Asia as speechless semi-apes! They know something of it in the Hoggar region--there are rumors in the farther uplands of Tibet--and once I heard an old man in China calling on Yog-Sothoth----" He turned pale, and made a curious sign in the air with his extended forefinger. Georgina felt genuinely alarmed, but became somewhat calmer as his speech took a less fantastic form. 

"Yes, it may be horrible, but it's glorious, too. The pursuit of knowledge, I mean. Certainly, there's no slovenly sentiment connected with it. Doesn't nature kill--constantly and remorselessly--and are any but fools horrified at the struggle? Killings are necessary. They are the glory of science. We learn something from them, and we can't sacrifice learning to sentiment. Hear the sentimentalists howl against vaccination! They fear it will kill the child. Well, what if it does? How else can we discover the laws of disease concerned? As a scientist's sister you ought to know better than to prate sentiment. You ought to help my work instead of hindering it!" 

"But Al," protested Georgina, "I haven't the 

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