Never, never can I forget what that flood of gas-light revealed. In a
row stood five large, glass-mounted incubators; behind the glass doors
lay, in dormant majesty, five enormous eggs. The eggs were
pale-green--lighter, somewhat, than robins' eggs, but not as pale as
herons' eggs. Each egg appeared to be larger than a large hogs-head,
and was partly embedded in bales of cotton-wool.
Five little silver thermometers inside the glass doors indicated a
temperature of 95° Fahrenheit. I noticed that there was an automatic
arrangement connected with the pipes which regulated the temperature.
I was too deeply moved for words. Speech seemed superfluous as we
stood there, hand in hand, contemplating those gigantic, pale-green
eggs.
There is something in a silent egg which moves one's deeper
emotions--something solemn in its embryotic inertia, something awesome
in its featureless immobility.
I know of nothing on earth which is so totally lacking in expression
as an egg. The great desert Sphinx, brooding through its veil of sand,
has not that tremendous and meaningless dignity which wraps the
colorless oval effort of a single domestic hen.
I held the hand of the young Countess very tightly. Her fingers closed
slightly.
Then and there, in the solemn presence of those emotionless eggs, I
placed my arm around her supple waist and kissed her.
She said nothing. Presently she stooped to observe the thermometer.
Naturally, it registered 95° Fahrenheit.
"Susanne," I said, softly.
"Oh, we must go up-stairs," she whispered, breathlessly; and, picking
up her silken skirts, she fled up the cellar-stairs.
I turned out the gas, with that instinct of economy which early
wastefulness has implanted in me, and followed the Countess Suzanne
through the suite of rooms and into the small reception-hall where she
had first received me.
She was sitting on a low divan, head bent, slowly turning a sapphire
ring on her finger, round and round.