The Stratagem and Other Stories

need not have done so; I had neither ambition nor en- ergy to make use of any of my powers. Even now, when I bring to mankind this message of a doom so appalling that at the age of twenty-four I am a shrivelled, blasted, withered wreck, I am supremely weary, supremely indif- ferent. I have the heart of a child and the consciousness of Satan, the lethargy of I know not what disease; and yet, thank—oh! there can be no God!—the resolution to warn mankind to follow my example, and then to explode a dynamite cartridge in my mouth. II In my third year at Newnham I spend four hours of every day at Professor Blair’s house. All other work was neglected, gone through mechanically, if at all. This came about gradually, as the result of an accident. The chemical laboratory has two rooms, one small and capable of being darkened. On this occasion (the May term of my second year) this room was in use. It was the first week of June, and extremely fine. The door was shut. Within was a girl, alone, experimenting with the galvanometer. I was absorbed in my own work. Quite without warning I looked up. “Quick!” said I, “Gladys is going to faint.” Every one in the room stared at me. I took a dozen steps towards the door, when the fall of a heavy body sent the laboratory into hysterics. It was only the heat and confined atmosphere, and Gladys should not have come to work that day at all, but she was easily revived, and then the demonstrator ac- quiesced in the anarchy that followed. “How did she know?” was the universal query; for that I knew was evident. Ada Brown (Athanasia contra mundum) pooh- poohed the whole affair; Margaret Letchmere thought I must have heard something, perhaps a cry inaudible to