Weird Tales/Volume 10/Issue 2/The Dark Chrysalis

by Eli Colter

Here Is the Last Part of

The Dark Chrysalis

By Eli Colter

The Story So Far

Saul Blauvette, working in his laboratory with John Cloud and Henry Am, discovers the microbe of cancer—a germ shaped like a devilfish, that is visible only when stained with a combination of red and blue dye. He finds that both his mother and Henry Arn are tainted with the cancer-microbe, and works feverishly to find a cure for the dread disease. He is spurred on by Helene Kinkaid's faith in him. He cures guinea-pigs of cancer by injecting into their veins a serum made of ether, water and rattlesnake poison. Henry Arn takes the serum, and as he is apparently recovering, Saul is persuaded to give the serum to his mother. Then to his horror he finds that the serum has killed Henry Arn.

 

The four living in the room froze to stunned unbelief. Saul stared wildly at Arn's still white face, dumbly, like a man in a trance. His voice rose to a frantic scream.

"God! What have I done! Damn, damn, damn, the stuff! I have killed my mother!" He hurled the bottle and needle from him savagely, crashing them against the floor, and the odor of ether rose in the air as he rushed from the room.

The three he left behind looked at each other with terrified eyes as they heard his feet go running away from the laboratory down the hard-packed path into the night.

"He'll do something desperate!" Cloud cried shakily.

"No," Mrs. Blauvette answered with a strange serenity, a calm they could not understand. "He will go to Helene."

Whittly started. It was the first time he had ever heard her mention the girl's name. Helene had told him something of the strained silence that had existed between her and Saul's mother from the first, and he had kept what he knew to himself. But he felt intuitively that Mrs. Blauvette was right. Saul had gone to Helene.

"She will hold him steady if anyone can," he said, forcing himself to speak calmly. "We must take care of Arn. Mrs. Blauvette, are you too tired to give us a little aid?"

"No. I think I shall never be tired again." She smiled, and Whittly saw her meaning in her face. "But I am not afraid. Already the pain has lessened in my side. Death lay so close ahead anyway. What does it matter? It is worth so much to be free from pain. But you two must be kind to Saul. He will need you, and he will need—Helene. I wish—I wish I could have seen her."

"Oh, here, Mrs. Blauvette, we needn't take that view of it," Whittly cut in briskly. "We must hang on to hope, at least. There are a number of things to think of. Arn was much nearer the end of his rope than you. It may be that he was simply in too far advanced a stage to be saved. The human body is a great machine. Give it half a chance and it will accomplish wonders, heal from incredible wounds and ravages. But it's like any other machine—it can be worn too badly for any repair. That may very logically have been the case with Arn."

"Yes, I had thought of that." Mrs. Blauvette nodded, turning to look at Cloud. "Do you have anything to offer, John?"

"I don't exactly know." Cloud frowned and hesitated. "But there may be something in this, too. It has acted on Henry exactly as 510 acted on the animals. Perhaps the human body needs a greater percentage of the ether. We've always got to experiment on the human in the last test, you know, harsh as it sounds. Else, how can we know? But I rather fancy that'Doc's hypothesis is pretty nearly correct."

"We're going to believe that, anyway," Whittly asserted positively. "And we're going to strive to forget oUrSelves for a while in taking care of Henry."

"Can't we get him out of the house?"t Cloud suggested. "Wouldn't it be better if Saul didn't see him here when he returns? We can't bury him tonight, but at least we can move him from here. We could take him to your office temporarily. I could go get the car. If Saul came back before we did he wouldn't miss the auto—he never uses it, you know. He'd rather walk, any time."

"Your suggestion may be a good one, but we don't dare act on it." Whittly glanced at Mrs. Blauvette, hesitating, then decided to give them both full cognizance of what was stirring in the town. "I haven't spoken of it to you before, because there was nothing to be gained by it, and because I didn't think there was any real danger. But the town is fanatically incensed over the mystery that surrounds this laboratory. They are threatening to raise a mob, come out here and burn the buildings down. Let alone, I believe such a sentiment will die out of itself—simply wear itself out. But the people are too badly aroused for us to dare taking any chances. Should anyone see us carrying a dead body away from here in the night, the town would be upon us in an hour. No—we 'll have to keep Henry here, but we'll move him into the laboratory for tonight, where Saul won't see him as he comes into the house. And we'll lock that door to keep Saul out of there." Whittly nodded at the door down the hall, the one door which connected the living rooms with the laboratory.

"Good Lord! I didn't know there was any kind of dissatisfaction with us in the town. Does Saul know?" Cloud looked from Whittly to Mrs. Blauvette, startled.

"He does not. Helene knows, but we agreed it was wisest not to tell him. We both thought he had enough to worry about without our adding to it. And then we both believe it will blow over."

"But what's the matter with them?" Mrs. Blauvette asked sharply. "Saul hasn't been bothering them in any way. He has been attending strictly to his own business."

"Yes, that's just it. He's been attending too strictly to his own business," Whittly returned with dry sarcasm. "They want to attend to it for him. They resent his secrecy. You know how people are in the aggregate, how they look on scientific experimenting. They don't understand. They imagine a thousand and one ghastly impossibilities. Granted, the real experiments are nearly always ghastly enough, but they multiply them tenfold."

"Well, why shouldn't Saul keep his work an absolute secret?" Cloud demanded, irritated at the thought of any intrusion on the part of the populace. "It seems to me it was the only thing to do."

"I quite agree with you." Whittly smiled rather grimly. "But the people don't. They think Saul has been up to all sorts of terrible things, and they're about ready to wreck this place. It's a perfectly logical thing to expect, given the mob spirit once aroused and stirred over something they don't understand. But we're giving the matter too much thought entirely and——"

"We're going to give it a little more thought," Cloud cut in. "We need to. Somebody is going to meet with an unpleasant surprize if the people start anything like that. I've got a gun over here in my trunk—and it's loaded for business."

"Good enough. I have one myself," Whittly approved. "I've been carrying it for the last week, every time I came out here. But we may be fretting over a remote contingency that will never mature into a crisis. Mrs. Blauvette—if you'll get me an old sheet? We'll make poor Henry ready for his last sleep."

 

Down through the night Saul raced, across the little hill that breathed the spirit of the girl he loved and into the little town. Not even in the streets did he stay his pace, but rushed headlong on to the house where Helene Kinkaid lived. Many an eye watched him go, and many a brain already harassed by dark suspicions regarding that laboratory in the trees took fire at the sight of him running mad and hatless through the thoroughfare. By the time he reached Helene's door more than a dozen people had collected into a following train, rushing to keep him in sight, taking the opposite side of the street to prevent his noticing their interest in him. Such precaution was unnecessary. In his state of mind he would have noticed nothing less than an earthquake.

He reached the house where Helene lived, leaped up the steps and threw himself headlong at the door. Helene heard the pound of his fists, and the cry of his voice calling her. She dropped the book she had been reading and rushed to admit him.

"Helene!" he cried, as she opened the door and he saw her startled face. "Come with me to the hill!"

"What's wrong? Saul! You look like a corpse!" The girl caught his shoulder and strove to shake him into coherent attention. "What's wrong?"

"Henry"—Saul gasped, but his voice carried clearly to the straining ears across the street—"Henry's dead and I've killed my mother!"

"Saul—no! No!"

"It's true! I'm half insane! Come out to the hill with me!"

He grasped her arm, pulling her toward him and down the steps, drawing her to keep pace with his furiously hurrying feet as he turned her toward the little birch-clad hill. Neither of them saw the horror-frozen group of people huddled in the shadows across the street, people who turned their heads to stare at each other in incensed dismay at the import of his words. Saul and Helene went hurrying on, stricken to dumbness with their own terrible problem, while the group of people behind them broke and ran rapidly in the opposite direction to spread the hideous thing Saul had said.

Upon the little hilltop Saul threw himself on the ground, buried his head in Helene's lap, gripped her convulsively with his arms and poured out the story of the last few terrible hours at the laboratory. She held him, listening in panic. Her heart shook smotheringly as he finished what he had to tell.

"And now what am I going to do?" Saul's throat choked shut, and he quivered from head to foot.

"You are coming with me." Helene drew him to his feet by sheer force with her strong hands, looked intently into his face and pointed down the hill toward the laboratory. "Dr. Whittly is sane, he will keep his head, but Cloud will need you—he must be about crazed, too. And your mother will need us both. We can't think of ourselves, now. We've got to think of your mother."

"Helene, where are you going?"

"I am going at last where I have always wanted to be, where I belong. I am going into your workroom with you, and into the crisis to walk through with you to the end. I am going into that laboratory, to see if we can find some way out of this terrible disaster that seems to have descended upon us. There may be some wild mistake. There may be some shred of hope yet. God does not desert his own!" She tugged at his arm and started down the hill. "I am going to your mother."

 

Back in the town the alarmists had raced from house to house, with shouts and angry cries, broadcasting the thing they had heard, gathering new recruits as they surged on. Over the streets from tongue to tongue flashed the report, gathering ugly significance and rousing flaming fury as it spread. Women stayed behind, trailing the skirts of the mob, shouting to each other the infamy that must be avenged, their outraged sense of fanatical anger rising.

Saul Blauvette had come tearing through the night, calling that Kinkaid girl who worked in Whittly's office, crying that the man Arn was dead and that he had killed his mother! They had been right all along! Hideous things went on in that mystery-shrouded laboratory! No wonder those fiends had kept their work an utter secret! They were experimenting on human beings!

As they gathered and rushed on toward the end of the town, the enraged minds of the people composing that wild mob envisioned unspeakable things. They saw people shut in that grim-walled building, cut into pieces and tortured to satisfy the gloating curiosity of merciless monsters. They saw bodies and bones and hideous bestial rites. They saw all the horrible things that lie in the purlieus of subconscious thought, ready to be roused into ghoulish life by inflamed brains. They poured down the street wildly, shrieking their indignation, picking up sticks and stones and any destructive missiles that came within reach of their hands.

On to the laboratory! Batter it, wreck it, tear it to splinters! Burn it to the ground! If Saul Blauvette burned with it, little matter! The ghastly, mystery-shrouded, ghost-ridden building must go!

Down through the streets and out of the little town they surged, half running in their spirit of destructive rage, jostling each other, trampling each other, cursing the great barnlike structure that few of them had ever seen. And five of the men in that crazed throng carried waste and cans of inflammable oil. And three of them carried, knowing it, cancers that ate into their living flesh, drove them sick with terror, and rushed them to the yawning grave from which none had been able to save their ravaged bodies.

 

Whittly and Cloud walked with slow, solemn steps into the lighted laboratory, carrying reverently between them the sheeted body of Henry Arn. Mrs. Blauvette stood in the doorway and watched as they paused by a bottle-littered table.

"Mrs. Blauvette, will you clear away some of this rubbish so that we can lay Henry here?" Whittly knew the value of busy hands, when the brain is harassed by things beyond control.

Mrs. Blauvette hurried forward, brushed the bottles aside and made clear a space large enough to accommodate the body. Gently Whittly and Cloud laid down the man who had come, as he said, to give his life for science in this place. As they turned to leave the laboratory, Cloud paused and gestured at a shelf and another table covered with numberless bottles.

"Doe, that's 511. There are gallons of it there. Saul and I were so sure of what we had found at last that we made up enough to inject a hundred thousand people. And that big jug contains unadulterated rattlesnake poison: the cans by it are ether cans—sufficient material there to make enough 511 to immunize the world to cancer—Saul and I were getting ready for the world. The stuff may be worthless—and it may be the answer to Saul's dream after all. Suppose that bunch of fanatics in town should get up a mob and come out here in the next few days, before we have time to determine the value of the solution——"

"Yes, you're right," Whittly cut in, turning with businesslike briskness to Mrs. Blauvette. "John's got a wise idea, and we'd better act on it. If you'll help us, we'll carry the 511 and all the raw materials out of here and lock up the laboratory. But where the devil are we going to put the stuff?"

"Out in the garage," John Cloud offered quickly. "It stands back a hundred yards in the trees—Saul wouldn't have the stink of the gasoline near the laboratory. As if a fellow could ever smell it in this stench! But the 511 would probably be safe back there. If they did come out here and attack the laboratory they'd never think of going out to wreck the garage, too. Frankly, I don't think we've got a thing to worry about. I don't think they'll ever come near here. It's all talk."

"Well, I rather look at it that way myself, but caching the solution is a wise precaution." Whittly stepped to the table and began filling his arms with the bottles numbered 511. "We'll carry it into the house first, and then move it on to the garage."

They worked quickly and efficiently, anxious to have the task off their hands, and in short time the bottles were moved to the living rooms, the lights extinguished in the big laboratory, and the door locked between. Henry Arn lay in the dark hush of the place where he had done his life's mad work, at peace, alone. Then the three began carrying the solution on to the garage. They had moved all of it but one last small armful which Cloud was gathering up, when they heard the footsteps of Saul and Helene running up the path outside. All of them turned to glance at the door, startled, as the scientist and the girl burst into their presence.

"Mother!" Saul stared imploringly into the eyes of the tall, gaunt woman who had been silently praying for his return, and his hand gripped the girl's arm. "Mother, I have brought you Helene."

Tense silence fell over the room, the silence seeming to belong to that grim place. The two women looked into each other's eyes, and the three men stood hushed and waiting as Helene spoke.

"I have come to you in the hour of death, and in the hour of life. We both so love your son—we both must see him through. I will not believe that Saul has failed. There must be some terrible mistake."

"No. There can be no mistake." Mrs. Blauvette shook her head in a slow gesture of denial, and something like relief lit her eyes as she studied the girl's face. "I am glad that you have come. I have wanted to see the woman who will stand by my son—when I shall have passed. I am content. But there can be no mistake. Henry Arn gave himself the solution 511. Saul gave it to me. And Henry Arn is dead."

"Do you believe in God?" Helene's mouth quivered. She took a step toward Saul's mother, holding her gaze with desperate calmness. "I tell you God has been leading Saul. He will not fail him now. He sent Saul to save the world!"

"Maybe He sent you here, to save us all," Mrs. Blauvette answered steadily. "He works in mysterious ways. And if He sent you here, He will lead you on. Still your mind and think—does it come to you what we may do?"

The girl stood motionless, her eyes wide, straining for some tangible thought, and as she so stood, staring into the older woman's face, Saul noticed the bottles in Cloud's arms and asked abruptly, "What are you doing with the 511?"

Cloud hesitated and glanced at Whittly. The old doctor nodded.

"Yes, tell him. It's time he knew."

"Time I knew what?" Saul's eyes bored into Cloud's.

"Why, it may amount to nothing, Saul, but Whittly tells me the town is pretty badly aroused, up in arms over the laboratory." Helene caught her breath in a sharp gasp, and her gaze leaped to Saul's great slate-gray eyes, but Cloud went on quietly: "They don't like it because we've been so secretive, and are imagining all sorts of ridiculously horrible things as going on out here. They threaten to come out and wreck the place. Doc and I thought we'd better move the solution to the garage where it would be safe in case the people should become fanatical enough to mob the buildings. We've moved it all but this."

"I want to see a bottle of it!" Helene's voice cut in, and she stepped toward Cloud, holding out her hand. Wonderingly Cloud gave her one of thé small bottles, and she turned it over in her fingers, looking at it closely. Suddenly she wheeled on Saul. "Where's the bottle Henry used? Get it, quickly!"

"Why? What does it matter which he used?" Saul frowned in puzzlement. "They're all alike."

"Don't question her," Mrs. Blauvette commanded, her eyes still on the girl's face. "I tell you she was sent; go get her the bottle. It's on the window-sill in Henry's room, where he left it."

Saul started in surprize, but went to get the bottle without a backward look, and three pairs of eyes centered on Helene intently, as though awaiting some miracle, as he returned and placed the bottle in her hand. She examined it closely, holding it up to the other one she had received from Cloud. The two bottles were identical, both numbered plainly in small inked figures, 511. She put them both in her left hand, holding her forefinger between them to keep from confusing them with each other, and pulled the corks with her right hand. She sniffed lightly at the small glass necks, and abruptly her eyes lit with a high light. Again she wheeled on Saul.

"How did it act on Henry Arn? Tell me!"

"It acted exactly as 510 acted on the animals," Saul answered, dazed by the expression on her face.

"Yes, it certainly did," Cloud put in. "I can vouch for that. Mrs. Blauvette can verify that that is what I told her a while ago."

"Oh, there's no doubt of its action," Saul returned. "If it had been 510 that Henry took, I'd know that we'd won the day. I'd know beyond all doubt that the action carried through into humans precisely the same. Helene! What is it? What do you think? What do you know?"

"It was 510 that Henry used!" The girl held the two bottles toward him, her eyes aflame. "Smell them—the one Henry used contains no ether!"

With a loud cry Saul leaped toward her and snatched the bottles, raising them alternately to his nostrils.

"God!" He turned a whitened countenance to his mother. "She's right! See that small bubble—that flaw on the edge of this bottle-neck? It's queerly shaped—like a cross. I remember! I took this bottle down to empty the 510 out of it and refill it with 511. John called me out, and I went and left it standing there. I'd already marked it 511, and we were so badly used up and excited that I forgot to go back and change the solution in it. The cross—the cross on the neck! Apropos! A cross! Henry died in vain!"

"No—he did not die in vain! He died for the cause he slaved to bring to fulfilment. He died for the world. He died that you might know, beyond all doubt. He died that others might live!" Mrs. Blauvette's voice rose in an exultant cry as she stepped swiftly forward, caught the girl in her arms and turned to her son. "See! 510 acted the same on him as it did on the animals. You and John both said it. Then 511 will act on humans—on me—the same as it did on the guinea-pig! Saul—you have saved mankind from hell! I know! And Helene was sent to save us all when we were crazed with fear!"

"For God's sake, listen! What's that?" Whittly caught Saul's arm and turned toward the window, his face paling. Tense silence flashed over the room, and five people held their breaths, listening.

 

Outside in the night, down the road toward the laboratory, came the tramp of hurrying, ruthless feet. The sound of angry shouts, curses and threats rose in the air, as yet a little way distant, but breaking into the stillness of the room with ugly menace.

"The mob!" Whittly whirled on the others, snapping concise orders. "Saul, you've got to get out of sight, quick! John, take that 511 to the garage as fast as you can run, come back here and get your gun. I'll be waiting for you. You two women go to the garage with John, and stay there till I come for you. Run, John! There's no time to waste!"

Cloud leaped out of the door with a curse, running swiftly toward the garage, but none of the others moved.

"Go on, Helene! You're in danger here! You and Mrs. Blauvette get to the garage. Take Saul with you!"

Still no one moved to obey the old doctor's imperative commands. Saul stood watching the two women, clasped in each others' arms. Helene shook her head slowly, but it was Mrs. Blauvette who spoke.

"No. We will stay here—with Saul. We have stood by him too long to change. We are standing by him now."

"Saul—make them go!" Whittly demanded furiously.

"No," Saul denied, his eyes on his mother's face. "And I shall not go. I shall stand by my workshop——"

"Lord, they're here!" Cloud burst into the room, leaped to his trunk against the wall and whipped put a loaded revolver. "They're a bunch of madmen! They'll do something murderous if we don't stop them!"

"Saul, you mad fool, you and the women stay here! It's too late to make the garage now. John and I are going out there armed. You leave that crazy mob to me! They all know me—they may listen to me!" Whittly pulled an ugly-looking weapon from his pocket and motioned to Cloud. "Come on, John! Shoot if you have to!"

The next instant Whittly and Cloud had dashed out the door, darted along the side of the house and come to a halt in front of the laboratory. The first of the mob had already passed to the other side of the great building, among them the men carrying the waste and the inflammable oil. Whittly leaped to the door and snapped on the huge floodlight that illuminated the front of the structure. The glow swept out in a wide arc, bringing into sharp relief the rage-distorted faces of the advancing throng, eyes glaring with insane fury, mouths gaping and screaming curses, threats and wild cries.

They halted a moment involuntarily, surprized by the swift flash of light, and the sudden appearance of Whittly-and Cloud with drawn guns.

"Stop!" Whittly's shout echoed harshly through the instant hush caused by their surprize. "The first one that makes another move, I §hoot! And I'll shoot to hit! You're mad! You're a mob of fanatical idiots, come to annoy a man who has been giving his life's blood to save you and all mankind from worse than death!"

"He's been experimenting upon people!" shrieked someone out in the crowd. Another voice took it up, and another, till the cry rose to a maddened roar. "He's been killing human beings for his damnable experiments." "He killed that fellow Arn!" "He killed his mother!" "He said so himself, we heard him!" "This building has got to go!" "The fiend killed his mother!"

"He did not! Listen to me! He saved her life!" Whittly's shout cut through their rage, and their long acquaintance with the doctor, their respect for him and his word, held them in muttering half-quietude to hear him out. "He's found a cure for cancer! Cancer, do you hear me? Corcoran—I see you out there. I see you, Jordan, and you, Masterson. All three of you have cancers—and you know that I know it! Do you want to die, horribly, as Elfield died last week? Or do you want this man to put life into your veins and make you whole?"

A stunned silence held the mob, shaken at the import of what Whittly had said. Then the voice of the man Corcoran answered belligerently: "If he saved his mother from cancer why did he say he killed her?"

"Arn took the solution himself!" Whittly answered, breathing in a little relief, knowing that he had got their attention. "Blauvette refused to give it to him till he was sure of its action. Arn took it himself. Arn appeared to be getting better, and Blauvette's mother was so near death that he gave the solution to her. Then Arn died. Blauvette was nearly crazed, he thought he'd killed his mother. But Arn had taken the wrong solution—and Mrs. Blauvette is alive, made whole again, as you can be made whole. Saul Blauvette has conquered cancer!"

A great shout rose in the crowd.

"If she's healed bring her out." "Bring her out—let us see her!"

Behind the doctor Mrs. Blauvette and Helene stepped into sight, one on each side of Saul. Whittly paled, holding his breath as he caught, sight of them. But the thing was done. The mob that had come to destroy, stayed to cheer.

"Blauvette! Blauvette! God save Blauvette! Blauvette has conquered cancer!"

They advanced toward him, shouting his name, cheering and crying in hysterical abandon, swayed to mad fervor of applause by the thing this man had done. And Cloud's cry broke above the sound of their shouts in startled dismay:

"Good God! They've set fire to the laboratory!"

Whittly wheeled to stare where Cloud pointed. On the other side of the huge building flame and smoke sent up their first menacing pillar and glow. The crowd began to back $way, stumbling over each other in their wild haste, and Whittly called frantically:

"Henry! Henry Ara's body is in the laboratory!"

"Let him stay!" Saul's answer rose above the increasing crackle of the flames. "He'd rather have it that way! Let him pass with the laboratory that was his love and his life! He would be glad, if he knew! Let him stay!"

In a reverent, silent group, Saul, Cloud, Whittly and the two women stood withdrawn from the heat of the rising, roaring flames, backed by the awed, hushed crowd. And Saul thought of the night that Henry had spoken of Servetus. He remembered his strange premonition—the scorching heat of fire, the cries of an angry mob, the choking gusts of billowing smoke. The great dream was fulfilled, the battle won. It was fitting that Henry should so go out into eternity, in the great laboratory razed by lurid flames, a mighty funeral pyre.

 

The next day the news broke. Over the whole world, by the press, by radio and cable flashed a message that staggered the population of the earth. Saul Blauvette had conquered cancer! Cancer! That hideous thing that came, none knew whence or how, that ate into the flesh and destroyed life, was now itself to be forever destroyed. Saul Blauvette! The name was on ten million tongues. He had not discovered the origin of the cancer germ. What need now to know? He had discovered the germ itself, he offered to all humanity the powerful serum that ended the life of the microbe and healed the stricken. Cancer! Saul Blauvette.

The world went wild. Men shouted in incredulous wonder. Women wept. Out of the dark chrysalis of their fear men and women came bursting into the light, crying the savior name of Saul Blauvette—Blauvette, who offered salvation to the horror-ridden, refusing to take a cent from them, asking only the privilege of making them whole. In droves they came to surround the office of old Doc Whittly, crowding like sheep. Some came walking with heads held high in hope, some weeping and leaning on others, some carried on stretchers, wan-faced, hardly daring to believe in the saving mercy of the formula 511.

Saul Blauvette, weary, worn, white and radiant, ordered the crew of madly busy assistants, while John Cloud, Whittly, Helene and Mrs. Blauvette moved swiftly among them, carrying bottles and needles filled with 511 and watching the tide of humanity come and go. Dying men and women, released from the grave, threw their hands high in a gesture of gratitude to God and blessed the name of Saul Blauvette. His mother, pausing to glance into his enormous slate-gray eyes, bowed her head in humility before the star in his forehead that shone on all the world.

"Doc!" Saul caught Whittly's arm. "Look at their eyes! They've come into the light! The dark chrysalis is shattered! But I'm still young. Helene and I can't stop here. Tell me what other horror menaces the world. Tell me what to tackle next."

"Next!" Whittly stared at him, and his mother and Helene stood very still just beyond. On his forehead! What a star! Whittly went on slowly:

"You've done your work. The world knows you for the greatest of the great."

"Every man's greatness must be measured by the quantity of his contribution," Saul answered, his voice deep with exaltation. "It seemed a big thing at first—now it seems so little. I've got to go on giving!"

"To the great all things are small," breathed Mrs. Blauvette, smiling into Helene's shining eyes.

"He will go on forever. You can not stay a star!"

[The End]