pouting wife with blood full of fire
for the pages of the literature of Hindoostan, prating of the loves of
Ganesha and Vishnu, when a goddess awaited his own neglectful arms. So
when on the day when he stepped into the box, leaving us the sole
repository of the secret of his whereabouts--that the mutton-headed
police might not interfere with the success of his experiment by
preventing what they might think practically suicide--you said to let
him stay."

"I was twenty and he thirty," mused the woman. "Poor young
Hilsenhoff."

"Young! I was twenty-three--and a man."

"Dead or alive, he is young Hilsenhoff to me. He was thirty when last
I saw him."

"Dead or alive? What are you thinking of?"

An idea had been taking shape in the woman's mind without her
realizing it. It had grown from her own words, rather than had the
words sprung from the idea.

"Why, if a man be brought into a condition where all bodily functions
are suspended and he is as he were dead, and remain in this condition
for months and be brought out of it no more harmed than if he had
slept overnight, why may it not be years, instead of months? Has any
man ever proved that, in this condition, one may not live on
indefinitely?" she said.

"No man has ever proved that one cannot, but what is more important,
no man has ever proved that one can. No man has ever proved beyond
shadow of doubt that one may not fashion wings and fly, but no man has
ever demonstrated that one can. In India, only one man has ever tried
to continue in a state of suspended animation for over six months, and
that was the rajah who, condemned to death by the English, ostensibly
died before the soldiers could come to carry out the sentence and was
brought out of his tomb and restored to life three days after a new
British viceroy had proclaimed a general amnesty to all past
offenders. The period was eight months. If the viceroys had not been
changed for a number of years, we might have learned more concerning
the length of the period in which a man may continue in the semblance
of death without it becoming reality. No, these twenty-five years has
Hilsenhoff been bones."

"Then let us take them out and bury them."

"No, no. Then would I feel like a murderer indeed. I left him in there
for you. Now let his bones rest there for sake of me."

But the woman had become possessed of an idea which in turn possessed
her, a dream, for which like all mankind, she would fight harder t