hat new things are possible to an extent beyond our imagination."

"You mean inventions?"

"Yes?"

"That's what interests me particularly. I should think it would be
awfully fascinating to find new things."

Bauer looked doubtfully at her. Helen was quick to detect the slight
hint of suspicion as to her sincerity.

"Do you doubt? What makes you?"

"Well, I--it isn't common for girls to care much about such things
generally, and I couldn't help------"

Bauer stumbled along painfully and finally stopped, and Helen was cruel
enough to enjoy his confusion.

"But I am interested, Mr. Bauer. I really am. And you must believe I am.
You will, won't you?"

"Yes! yes!" Bauer flung the last shred of his doubt to the winds and
eagerly begged pardon for his distrust.

"All right. Now that we have settled the quarrel, we will be good
friends, won't we?"

"Yes," said Bauer, smiling. "If you want to call it a quarrel."

"It was a quarrel all right," said Helen hastily. "Now you must tell me
what your ambitions are, what you are really working for. I have
wondered often if it wasn't awfully dangerous to be experimenting with
electricity, and how do you try new things with wires and batteries and
dynamos and--and--things without getting killed several times while you
are trying?"

"It's not as dangerous as some other things," thought Bauer, as Helen,
in her real earnestness, put her work down and came across the room and
took a chair by the table opposite him. If she had been a real coquette
intent on making an onslaught on poor Bauer she could not have chosen a
more perfect way to do it. For if you want to engage the hearty good
will of anyone, ask him rapid fire questions about the one thing he is
most interested in and would like to talk about, if his modesty did not
forbid.

So Felix Bauer was never in so electrically dangerous a situation in all
his life as at this moment when Helen Douglas came over and sat down
there with a real eagerness to know about his ambitions as an inventor.
For Helen was honestly interested in many things that naturally belong
to mere man's domain, especially in the realm of mechanical invention.

"Walter has told me what you said about making a writing machine that
would take a visible spelled word on paper when you talked into it. You
don't really think a thing like that could be done, do you?"

Bauer looked at the handsome quizzical face opposite, gravely.

"Do _you?_ How do you da