thing looks simple enough, and
yet--what a distance from the first rough implement to this thing, which
seems almost to live--a thing with a brain of metal at least. Have not
these wheels and axles had their parents and ancestors--their pedigree
stretching back into the past? The steel has brought forth, and its
descendants again in turn, advancing always toward something finer,
stronger, more efficient. And here is the last stage reached by human
invention in this particular work up to now--yet, after all, is it
good enough? An invention successful enough to bring money in to the
inventor--that is not all. It must be more; it must be a world-success,
a thing to make its way across the prairies, across the enormous plains
of India and Egypt--that is what is needed. Sleep? rest? food? What are
such things when so much is at stake!

There was no longer that questioning in his ear: Why? Whither? What
then? Useless to ponder on these things. His horizon was narrowed down
to include nothing beyond this one problem. Once he had dreamed of a
work allied to his dreams of eternity. This, certainly, was not it. What
does the gain amount to, after all, when humanity has one more machine
added to it? Does it kindle a single ray of dawn the more in a human
soul?

Yet this work, such as it was, had now become his all. It must and
should be all. He was fast bound to it.

When he looked up at the window, there seemed to be faces at each pane
staring in. "What? Not finished yet?" they seemed to say. "Think what it
means if you fail!" Merle's face, and the children's: "Must we be driven
from Loreng, out into the cold?" The faces of old Uthoug and his wife:
"Was it for this you came into an honourable family? To bring it to
ruin?" And behind them, swarming, all the town. All knew what was at
stake, and why he was toiling so. All stared at him, waiting. The Bank
Manager was there too--waiting, like the rest.

One can seize one's neck in iron pincers, and say: You shall! Tired?
difficulties? time too short?--all that doesn't exist. You shall!
Is this thing or that impossible? Well, make it possible. It is your
business to make it possible.

He spent but little time at home now; a sofa in the workshop was his
bed. Often Merle would come in with food for him, and seeing how pale
and grey and worn out he was, she did not dare to question him. She
tried to jest instead. She had trained herself long ago to be gay in a
house where shadows