"My God," moaned Gilmour tragically; then in frenzy of agony he seized his former sweetheart. "Heaven help me, can't you understand? This is horrible; have mercy on me. What has the swine done to you, my love? Tell me, Jean. Talk to me! Oh, God, I'm going mad," he cried, for he was aware of conflict in the youth's face. The last remnants of his former sweetheart fought to relieve him of his torture. But soon it passed and the stranger had conquered. There was no response to Gilmour's pleas. There was no one but a youth who pitied him, but with all man's lack of understanding for a friend in love, he only dimly knew the reason for his emotion.

Suddenly Gilmour stopped. "You are not Jean," he said, and with a little grunt of hopelessness, he ceased his outburst. From out of his haggard face his eyes turned with the look of a dumb beast whose whereabouts are strange and terrifying. Then ignoring the others, he fell against the bench and sobbed like a child.

Jeanette, his sweetheart, who used to smile up at him with blue eyes full of love, sweet promise of heavenly days-she had gone, gone where no man could find her, wiped clean away into nothing, dissolved in the Seventh Serum!

He became as a child; his brain collapsed at the utter horror of it all. Death was natural; it could be understood in its frightful, final way. But this was like searching in infinity. He could not find her even in the deepest tombs of earth. She was no more. She had been swallowed in frightful inaccessible nothingness! He shuddered and sobbed while the creature who had been his sweetheart looked on with a piteous and puzzled expression upon his face.

After a while, Gilmour's grief passed and his brain burned dully making him incapable of much thought. His body seemed as if part of it had been blown away. He almost felt as though he could reach down and feel the hole inside himself, He regained his composure and surveyed the young man with bitterness and hate upon his face.

"The Seventh Serum," he said slowly. "So Neville knew what he was talking about, and he got a son after all. Tell me how he did it."

The boy told him readily, and as Gilmour listened, he saw how true Neville's theories were, Jeanette's former girlish curves had gone; a young man just reaching maturity stood before him. The shoulders had broadened, the chest was flat. His voice was deeper, and Gilmour shivered, when he saw that the boy's face had been shaved. But the change was not yet really complete, for he still had an air of femininity about him, little ways and habits that he would soon lose.

The professor had been very thorough with the excuse of being deeply engrossed in some experiment, and not wishing to be distracted, he had packed off all his servants. Then, without Jeanette's consent or knowledge, he had given her the Seventh Serum.

As Neville had said, the transformation had been quite painless. Jeanette had changed almost without being aware of it.

She had waked one day with the mind of a man, and then to him he never was a girl. The very idea was ridiculous; he could not even imagine the thoughts of the opposite sex!

"And now you're a man; you can't love me not being a girl. Being a man you may not even like me. Hell, what nonsense it is!" muttered Gilmour, brooding with the blue flame of a Bunsen reflected in his eyes.

Then he lost control of himself again.

"But you must come back, Jeanette!" be cried aloud to himself. "I cannot live like this, my darling. Where are you? Night and day it will torment me forever. Oh, God, let me see her again!" He sobbed, and turned suddenly to the youth; his face drawn and his eyes full of bate. "You don't understand, do you? You're a man! You don't know what it's like to have your sweetheart robbed like this - just taken away to nowhere. But you must turn back; you are not a man. You were born a girl-don't you see?" With an insight born of despair, he read the other's thoughts, and the smouldering heat in his head seemed to burst into flames and the hole in his body grew wider.

"I know that it seems mad to you, changing yourself to a girl. But you can; you must! I will do it. The swine will not rob me of my sweetheart. Oh, Jeanette, Jeanette, my darling; please come back to me."

He cried Piteously, and with the look of a hungry animal, he made f or the door, but he was stopped by the youth who was alarmed by the look upon his face.

"What are you going to do?" he asked.

Gilmour turned upon him with a snarl. "Stay here," he said, "and don't interfere. I'm going to try to bring you back. Do you think I can bear this? You are a man, and if you are one much longer, you unnatural thing. I'll kill you!" CLICK HERE TO GO TO CHAPTER V