exhausted. It seemed to him that he saw a placard with the inscription “Powderite, the finest explosive powder for the complexion,” and on the placard was a picture of the Princess putting out her tongue at him. He tried to turn away, but two bare brown arms stretched out from the placard and, medusalike, drew him towards her. He pulled a clasp-knife out of his pocket and ripped it up. Then he had a fear that he had committed a murder, and dashed away along the street in which he had lived years before. He came upon a panting motor-car and leapt into it shouting, “Drive quickly.” The car started off, and only then for the first time did he notice that the Princess was sitting at the wheel with a leather helmet on her head in which he had not seen her before. At a turning in the road someone threw himself in front of the car, evidently to stop it; there was an unearthly ery, the wheels lurched over something soft, and Prokop woke up.
He realized that he was feverish, got up, and looked about the laboratory for some kind of drug. He found nothing except pure alcohol; he took a good pull at it, burnt his mouth and throat, and again lay down with his head spinning. He saw before him a few formule, some flowers, Annie, and a confused train journey; then everything became fused, and he fell into a deep sleep.
In the morning he obtained permission to make an experiment on the artillery ground, a fact which caused Carson extraordinary delight. Prokop refused the help of a single laboratory assistant, and saw to it himself that a passage was dug in the sandstone as far from the castle as possible, in the
