school?"

"Never saw the inside of one, worse luck," was the answer. "I had
to dig it out for myself."

"And why do you think I have made this thing?" he demanded,
abruptly. "Dreaming to leave footprints on the sands of time?" He
laughed one of his horrible mocking laughs. "Not at all. To get
it patented, to make money from it, to revel in piggishness with
all night in while other men do the work. That's my purpose.
Also, I have enjoyed working it out."

"The creative joy," I murmured.

"I guess that's what it ought to be called. Which is another way
of expressing the joy of life in that it is alive, the triumph of
movement over matter, of the quick over the dead, the pride of the
yeast because it is yeast and crawls."

I threw up my hands with helpless disapproval of his inveterate
materialism and went about making the bed. He continued copying
lines and figures upon the transparent scale. It was a task
requiring the utmost nicety and precision, and I could not but
admire the way he tempered his strength to the fineness and
delicacy of the need.

When I had finished the bed, I caught myself looking at him in a
fascinated sort of way. He was certainly a handsome man--beautiful
in the masculine sense. And again, with never-failing wonder, I
remarked the total lack of viciousness, or wickedness, or