not even
know each other's name yet. Let me introduce myself first.

"My name is Maurice Colston; I am a bachelor, as you see. For the
rest, in practice I am an idler, a dilettante, and a good deal else
that is pleasant and utterly useless. In theory, let me tell you, I
am a Socialist, or something of the sort, with a lively conviction as
to the injustice and absurdity of the social and economic conditions
which enable me to have such a good time on earth without having done
anything to deserve it beyond having managed to be born the son of my
father."

He stopped and looked at his guest through the wreaths of his cigar
smoke as much as to say: "And now who are you?"

Arnold took the silent hint, and opened his mouth and his heart at
the same time. Quite apart from the good turn he had done him, there
was a genial frankness about his unconventional host that chimed in
so well with his own nature that he cast all reserve aside, and told
plainly and simply the story of his life and its master passion, his
dreams and hopes and failures, and his final triumph in the hour when
triumph itself was defeat.

His host heard him through without a word, but towards the end of his
story his face betrayed an interest, or rather an expectant anxiety,
to hear what was coming next that no mere friendly concern of the
moment for one less fortunate than himself could adequately account
for. At length, when Arnold had completed his story with a brief but
graphic description of the last successful trial of his model, he
leant forward in his chair, and, fixing his dark, steady eyes on his
guest's face, said in a voice from which every trace of his former
good-humoured levity had vanished--

"A strange story, and truer, I think, than the one I told you. Now
tell me on your honour as a gentleman: Were you really in earnest
when I heard you say on the embankment that you would rather smash up
your model and take the secret with you into the next world, than
sell your discovery to the Tsar for the million that he has offered
for such an air-ship as yours?"

"Absolutely in earnest," was the reply. "I have seen enough of the
seamy side of this much-boasted civilisation of ours to know that it
is the most awful mockery that man ever insulted his Maker with. It
is based on fraud, and sustained by force--force that ruthlessly
crushes all who do not bow the knee to Mammon. I am the enemy of a
society that does not permit a man to be honest and