The Equinox (Volume I, Number I)

THE EQUINOX wife with an axe. I mastered my impulse, and by a triumph of my logical faculties I cut my own right arm. Having no arm, I could no more kill my wife with an axe. God rewarded me by giving me the power of reading thought, which constitutes an extra sense for me; and to my nose He gave a voice of its own. I was a dentist. Indeed, I have found a new way of extracting teeth without gas. You merely press the neck of your patient, who faints in consequence, and you can then safely operate. How did you come to this? What caused you to take the attire of a man in place of the usual brown coat of a cover ?” His companion—friend or master—bade him keep silent for a while, and we journeyed in silence. When we came in sight of Brighton the motor-car stopped suddenly in front of a large gate. The moment after we entered a park, and the door being opened, I was taken into the house. The man whom, so unhappily for me, I had met in the street was now alone with me. Without leaving me a moment’s peace, he began to take my measure with the utmost care and caution. Then, pointing to me a strong and broad cage, he ordered me to step in. It would be very tiresome and quite useless for me to express here my various thoughts and the miserable conster- nation into which I was thrown. I would not live those hours again for anything in the world, and had the devil been within my reach I should decidedly have given my soui to him in order that he should see me safely home. Butno one came to my rescue, and, though most unwilling, I had to submit to my terrible fate. 360