t in my deck chair, a cigar half consumed in his white,
dexterous-looking fingers. The light of the swinging lamp fell on his
white hair; he stared through the little window out at the starlight.
I sat as far away from him as possible, the table between us
and the revolvers to hand. Montgomery was not present.
I did not care to be with the two of them in such a little room.

"You admit that the vivisected human being, as you called it, is,
after all, only the puma?" said Moreau. He had made me visit
that horror in the inner room, to assure myself of its inhumanity.

"It is the puma," I said, "still alive, but so cut and mutilated
as I pray I may never see living flesh again. Of all vile--"

"Never mind that," said Moreau; "at least, spare me those
youthful horrors. Montgomery used to be just the same.
You admit that it is the puma. Now be quiet, while I reel off
my physiological lecture to you."

And forthwith, beginning in the tone of a man supremely bored,
but presently warming a little, he explained his work to me.
He was very simple and convincing. Now and then there was a touch
of sarcasm in his voice. Presently I found myself hot with shame at our
mutual positions.

The creatures I had seen were not men, had never been men.
They were animals, humanised animals,--triumphs of vivisection.

"You forget all that a skilled vivisector can do with living things,"
said Moreau. "For my own part, I'm puzzled why the things
I have done here have not been done before. Small efforts,
of course, have been made,--amputation, tongue-cutting, excisions.
Of course you know a squint may be induced or cured by surgery?
Then in the case of excisions you have all kinds of secondary changes,
pigmentary disturbances, modifications of the passions, alterations in
the secretion of fatty tissue. I have no doubt you have heard of
these things?"

"Of course," said I. "But these foul creatures of yours--"

"All in good time," said he, waving his hand at me; "I am only beginning.
Those are trivial cases of alteration. Surgery can do better things
than that. There is building up as well as breaking down and changing.
You have heard, perhaps, of a common surgical operation resorted to in
cases where the nose has been destroyed: a flap of skin is cut from
the forehead, turned down on the nose, and heals in the new position.
This is a kind of grafting in a new position of part of an animal
upon itself. Grafting of freshly o