broke out ever and again....

"Really, you know," he said, rubbing his hands together and laughing
nervously, "it has more than a theoretical interest.

"For example," he confided, bringing his face close to the Professor's
and dropping to an undertone, "it would perhaps, if suitably handled,
_sell_....

"Precisely," he said, walking away,--"as a Food. Or at least a food
ingredient.

"Assuming of course that it is palatable. A thing we cannot know till we
have prepared it."

He turned upon the hearthrug, and studied the carefully designed slits
upon his cloth shoes.

"Name?" he said, looking up in response to an inquiry. "For my part I
incline to the good old classical allusion. It--it makes Science res--.
Gives it a touch of old-fashioned dignity. I have been thinking ... I
don't know if you will think it absurd of me.... A little fancy is
surely occasionally permissible.... Herakleophorbia. Eh? The nutrition
of a possible Hercules? You know it _might_ ...

"Of course if you think _not_--"

Redwood reflected with his eyes on the fire and made no objection.

"You think it would do?"

Redwood moved his head gravely.

"It might be Titanophorbia, you know. Food of Titans.... You prefer the
former?

"You're quite sure you don't think it a little _too_--"

"No."

"Ah! I'm glad."

And so they called it Herakleophorbia throughout their investigations,
and in their report,--the report that was never published, because of
the unexpected developments that upset all their arrangements,--it is
invariably written in that way. There were three kindred substances
prepared before they hit on the one their speculations had foretolds and
these they spoke of as Herakleophorbia I, Herakleophorbia II, and
Herakleophorbia III. It is Herakleophorbia IV. which I--insisting upon
Bensington's original name--call here the Food of the Gods.

III.

The idea was Mr. Bensington's. But as it was suggested to him by one of
Professor Redwood's contributions to the Philosophical Transactions, he
very properly consulted that gentleman before he carried it further.
Besides which it was, as a research, a physiological, quite as much as a
chemical inquiry.

Professor Redwood was one of those scientific men who are addicted to
tracings and curves. You are familiar--if you are at all the sort of
reader I like--with the sort of scientific paper I mean. It is a paper
you cannot make head nor tail of, and at the end come five or six lo