himself and his own
business to note the landscape, or to be troubled by the suffocating
closeness of the atmosphere,--he stood gazing with the idolatry of a
passionate lover at a small, plain metal case, containing a dozen or
more small plain metal cylinders, as small as women's thimbles, all
neatly ranged side by side, divided from contact with one another by
folded strips of cotton.

"There it is!" he went on, apostrophising the still
air--"Complete,--perfected! If I sold that to any nation under the sun,
that nation could rule the world!--could wipe out everything save
itself and its own people! I have wrested the secret from the very womb
of Nature!--it is mine--all mine! I would have given it to Britain--or
to the United States--but neither will accept my terms--so therefore I
hold it--I, only!--which is just as well! I--just I--am master of
destiny!--the Power we call God, has put this tiling into my hands!
What a marvel and shall I not use it? I will! Let Germany but stir an
inch towards aggression, and Germany shall exist no longer!--The same
with any other nation that starts a quarrel--I--I alone will settle it!"

His eyes blazed with the light of fanaticism--he was obsessed by the
force of his own ideas and schemes, and the metal case on the table
before him was, to his mind, time, life, present and future. He had
arrived at that questionable point of intellectual attainment when man
forgets that there is any existing force capable of opposing him, and
imagines that he has but to go on in his own way to grasp all worlds
and the secrets of their being. At this juncture, so often arrived at
by many, a kind of super-sureness sets in, persuading the finite nature
that it has reached the infinite. The whole mental organisation of the
man thrilled with an awful consciousness of power. He said within
himself "I hold the lives of millions at my mercy!"

Other thoughts--other dreams had passed away for the moment--he had
forgotten life as it presents itself to the ordinary human being. Now
and again a flitting vision of Morgana vaguely troubled him,--her
intellectual capacity annoyed him, and yet he would have been glad to
discuss with her the scientific unfolding of his great secret--she
would understand it in all its bearings,--she might
advise--Advice!--no!--he did not need the advice of a woman! As for
Manella, he had not seen her since her last violent outburst of what he
called "temper"--and he had no wish f