made a wry face.

"Don't thank me," he excepted. "I'm not at all sure I meant the admission
to be complimentary; in fact I hardly think I did. I was hoping for once
I'd find you napping, without your measuring stick. In other words--find
you--human."

"And now you're convinced the case is hopeless?"

"Convinced, yes, if I thought you were serious."

Roberts laughed, a big-chested, tolerant laugh.

"Seems to me you ought to realize by this time that I am serious,
Armstrong. You've known me long enough. Do you still fancy I've been
posing these last five years you've known me?"

"No; you never pose, Darley. This is a compliment, I think; moreover,
it's the reason most of all why I like you." He laughed in turn,
unconsciously removing the sting from the observation following. "I can't
see any other possible excuse for our being friends. We're as different
as night is from day."

The criticism was not new, and Roberts said nothing.

"I wonder now and then, at times like this," remarked Armstrong, "how
long we will stick together. It's been five years, as you say. I wonder
if it'll be another five."

The smile vanished from Darley Roberts' eyes, leaving them shrewd and
gray.

"I wonder," he repeated.

"It'll come some time, the break. It's inevitable. We're fundamentally
too different to avoid a clash."

"You think so?"

"I know so. It's written."

"And when we do?"

"We'll hate each other--as much as we like each other now. That, too, is
written."

Again Roberts laughed. A listener would have read self-confidence
therein.

"If that's the case, wouldn't it be wiser for us to separate in advance
and avoid the horrors of civil war? I'll move out and leave you in
peaceful possession of our cave if you wish."

"No; I don't want you to. I need you. That's another compliment. You hold
me down to earth. You're a helpful influence, Darley, providing one knows
you and takes you with allowance."

The comment was whimsical, but beneath was a deeper, more tacit admission
which both men understood, that drowned the surface banter of the
words.

"I think again, sometimes," drifted on Armstrong, "that if the powers
which are could only put us both in a pot as I put things together down
in the laboratory, and melt us good and shake us up, so, until we were
all mixed into one, it would make a better product than either of us as
we are now."

"Perhaps," equivocally.

"But that's the curse of it. The thing can't