ncomfortably close to
that point.

"Come with me," I urged him; "I need you. You can have the run of our
laboratories--work out the new alloys that are so much needed. You
would be tremendously valuable."

He had mentioned Maida to me, so I added: "And you and Maida can be
married, and can live like a king and queen on what my outfit can pay
you."

He smiled at me as he might have done toward a child. "Like a king and
queen," he said. "But, friend Bob, Maida and I do not approve of kings
and queens, nor do we wish to follow them in their follies.

"It is hard waiting,"--I saw his eyes cloud for a moment--"but Maida
is willing. She is working, too--she is up in Melford as you know--and
she has faith in my work. She sees with me that it will mean the
release of our fellow-men and women from the poverty that grinds out
their souls. I am near to success; and when I give to the world the
secret of power, then--" But I had to read in his far-seeing eyes the
visions he could not compass in words.

* * * * *

That was the first time. I was flying a new ship when next I dropped
in on him. A sweet little job I thought it then, not like the old
busses that Paul and I had trained in at college, where the top speed
was a hundred and twenty. This was an A. B. Clinton cruiser, and the
"A.B.C.'s" in 1933 were good little wagons, the best there were.

I asked Paul to take a hop with me and fly the ship. He could fly
beautifully; his lameness had been no hindrance to him. In his
slender, artist hands a ship became a live thing.

"Are you doing any flying?" I asked, but the threadbare suit made his
answer unnecessary.

"I'll do my flying later," he said, "and when I do,"--he waved
contemptuously toward my shining, new ship--"you'll scrap that piece
of junk."

The tone matched the new lines in his face--deep lines and bitter.
This practical world has always been hard on the dreamers.

Poverty; and the grinding struggle that Maida was having; the
expulsion from college when he was assured of a research scholarship
that would have meant independence and the finest of equipment to work
with--all this, I found, was having its effect. And he talked in a way
I didn't like of the new Russia and of the time that was near at hand
when her communistic government should sweep the world of its curse of
capitalistic control. Their propaganda campaign was still going on,
and I gathered that Paul had allied h