ed.

He held up a warning finger and tiptoed to the door. He opened it
suddenly and seemed relieved to find no one outside.

"Hush!" he said, closing the door again. "Yes, they are butterflies." He
came back to the table and gave one of the glass panels a tap with his
finger. The butterflies stirred and some spread their wings. They were a
brilliant greenish purple shot with pale blue. "Yes, they are
butterflies."

I peered at them.

"The specimen is unknown in England as far as I know."

"Quite so. They are peculiar to Russia."

"But what are you doing with them?" I asked.

He continued to smile.

"Do you notice anything remarkable about these butterflies?"

"No," I said after prolonged observation, "I can't say I do ... save
that they are not denizens of this country."

"I think we might christen them," he said. "Let us call them Lepidoptera
Sarakoffii." He tapped the glass again and watched the insects move.
"But they are very remarkable," he continued. "Do they appear healthy to
you?"

"Perfectly."

"You agree, then, that they are in good condition?"

"They seem to be in excellent condition."

"No signs of decay--or disease?"

"None."

He nodded.

"And yet," he said thoughtfully, "they should be, according to natural
law, a mass of decayed tissue."

"Ah!" I looked at him with dawning comprehension. "You mean----?"

"I mean that they should have died long ago."

"How long do they live normally?"

"About twenty to thirty hours. At the outside their life is not more
than thirty-six hours. These are somewhat older."

I gazed at the little creatures crawling aimlessly about. _Aimless_, did
I say? There they were, filling up the floor of the glass case, moving
with difficulty, getting in each other's way, sprawling and colliding,
apparently without aim or purpose. At that spectacle my thoughts might
well have taken a leap into the future and seen, instead of a crowded
mass of butterflies, a crowded mass of humanity. I asked Sarakoff a
question.

"How old are they?" I expected to hear they had existed perhaps a day or
two beyond their normal limit.

"They are almost exactly a year old," was the reply. I stared,
marvelling. A year old! I bent down, gazing at the turbulent restless
mass of gaudy colour. A year old--and still vital and healthy!

"You mean these insects have lived a whole year?" I exclaimed, still
unconvinced.

He nodded.

"But that is a miracle!"

"It is, proportionatel