le roadster. It is a fairy road at night,
that lake drive between the north and south sides. Even the Rush street
bridge cannot quite spoil it. Fanny sat back luxuriously and let the
soft splendor of the late August night enfold her. She was intelligently
monosyllabic, while Fascinating Facts talked. At the door of her
apartment house (she had left the Mendota weeks before) Fascinating
Facts surprised her.

"I--I'd like to see you again, Miss Brandeis. If you'll let me."

"I'm so busy," faltered Fanny. Then it came to her that perhaps he did
not know. "I'm with Haynes-Cooper, you know. Assistant buyer in the
infants' wear department."

"Yes, I know. I suppose a girl like you couldn't be interested in seeing
a chap like me again, but I thought maybe----"

"But I would," interrupted Fanny, impulsively. "Indeed I would."

"Really! Perhaps you'll drive, some evening. Over to the Bismarck
Gardens, or somewhere. It would rest you."

"I'm sure it would. Suppose you telephone me."

That was her honest, forthright, Winnebago Wisconsin self talking.
But up in her apartment the other Fanny Brandeis, the calculating,
ambitious, determined woman, said: "Now why did I say that! I never want
to see the boy again.

"Use him. Experiment with him. Evidently men are going to enter into
this thing. Michael Fenger has, already. And now this boy. Why not try
certain tests with them as we used to follow certain formulae in the
chemistry laboratory at high school? This compound, that compound, what
reaction? Then, when the time comes to apply your knowledge, you'll
know."

Which shows how ignorant she was of this dangerous phase of her
experiment. If she had not been, she must have known that these were not
chemicals, but explosives with which she proposed to play.

The trouble was that Fanny Brandeis, the creative, was not being fed.
And the creative fire requires fuel. Fanny Brandeis fed on people, not
things. And her work at Haynes-Cooper was all with inanimate objects.
The three months since her coming to Chicago had been crowded and
eventful. Haynes-Cooper claimed every ounce of her energy, every atom
of her wit and resourcefulness. In return it gave--salary. Not too much
salary. That would come later, perhaps. Unfortunately, Fanny Brandeis
did not thrive on that kind of fare. She needed people. She craved
contact. All these millions whom she served--these unseen, unheard men
and women, and children--she wanted to see them. Sh