think it is?"

I affected to look puzzled, and thought for a moment. "I cannot
imagine," said I, "unless----"

"No," he interrupted, "do not try to guess it, for you never will. _I
turn the flange inward_ on a Wilkinson lathe and give it a parabolic
section so that the axes are always parallel to each other and to the
shaft.... There!"

I had no idea the man could be so moved: there was jubilation in his
voice.

"There!" he said again, as though some effort of the brain had exhausted
him. "It can't be touched, mind you," he added suspiciously; "I've taken
out the provisional patents. There's one man I know wants to fight it in
the courts as an infringement on Wilkinson's own patent, but it can't be
touched!" He shook his head decisively. "No! my lawyer's certain of
that--and so'm I!"

Here there was a break in his communications, so to speak, and he had
apparently run out. It was not for me to wind him up again. I watched
him with a sombre relief as he stood up again to full height, leaned his
head back, and sighed profoundly with satisfaction and with completion.
He folded up his specification and put it in his pocket again. He tore
off the incomprehensible sketch he had made with his pencil while he was
speaking, and put it by me on the mantelshelf. "You might like to keep
it," he said pathetically; "it's a document, that is; it will be famous
some day." He looked at it lovingly, almost as though he was going to
take it back again: but he thought better of it.