Stella Fregelius | Page 3

you? There are so many odd things of the sort. But one
can never be sure; it mightn't work next time."
"Will you try again?" he asked.
"If you like," she answered; "but I don't believe I shall hear anything
now. Somehow--since that last business--everything seems different to
me."
"Don't be foolish," he said; "you have nothing to do with the hearing; it
is my new receiver."
"I daresay," she replied; "but, then, why couldn't you make it work with
other people?"
Morris answered nothing. He, too, wondered why.
Next morning they made the experiment. It failed. Other experiments
followed at intervals, most of which were fiascos, although some were
partially successful. Thus, at times Mary could hear what he said. But
except for a word or two, and now and then a sentence, he could not
hear her whom, when she was still a child and his playmate, once he
had heard so clearly.

"Why is it?" he said, a year or two later, dashing his fist upon the table
in impotent rage. "It has been; why can't it be?"
Mary turned her large blue eyes up to the ceiling, and reflectively
rubbed her dimpled chin with a very pretty finger.
"Isn't that the kind of question they used to ask oracles?" she asked
lazily--"Oh! no, it was the oracles themselves that were so vague. Well,
I suppose because 'was' is as different from 'is' as 'as' is from 'shall be.'
We are changed, Cousin; that's all."
He pointed to his patent receiver, and grew angry.
"Oh, it isn't the receiver," she said, smoothing her curling hair; "it's us.
You don't understand me a bit--not now--and that's why you can't hear
me. Take my advice, Morris"--and she looked at him sharply --"when
you find a woman whom you can hear on your patent receiver, you had
better marry her. It will be a good excuse for keeping her at a distance
afterwards."
Then he lost his temper; indeed, he raved, and stormed, and nearly
smashed the patent receiver in his fury. To a scientific man, let it be
admitted, it was nothing short of maddening to be told that the
successful working of his instrument, to the manufacture of which he
had given eight years of toil and study, depended upon some pre-
existent sympathy between the operators of its divided halves. If that
were so, what was the use of his wonderful discovery, for who could
ensure a sympathetic correspondent? And yet the fact remained that
when, in their playmate days, he understood his cousin Mary, and when
her quiet, indolent nature had been deeply moved by the shock of the
news of her mother's peril, the aerophone had worked. Whereas now,
when she had become a grown-up young lady, he did not understand
her any longer--he, whose heart was wrapped up in his experiments,
and who by nature feared the adult members of her sex, and shrank
from them; when, too, her placid calm was no longer stirred, work it
would not.
She laughed at his temper; then grew serious, and said:

"Don't get angry, Morris. After all, there are lots of things that you and
I can't understand, and it isn't odd that you should have tumbled across
one of them. If you think of it, nobody understands anything. They
know that certain things happen, and how to make them happen; but
they don't know why they happen, or why, as in your case, when they
ought to happen, they won't."
"It is all very well for you to be philosophical," he answered, turning
upon her; "but can't you see, Mary, that the thing there is my life's work?
It is what I have given all my strength and all my brain to make, and if
it fails in the end--why, then I fail too, once and forever. And I have
made it talk. It talked perfectly between this place and Seaview, and
now you stand there and tell me that it won't work any more because I
don't understand you. Then what am I to do?"
"Try to understand me, if you think it worth while, which I don't; or go
on experimenting," she answered. "Try to find some substance which is
less exquisitely sensitive, something a little grosser, more in key with
the material world; or to discover someone whom you do understand.
Don't lose heart; don't be beaten after all these years."
"No," he answered, "I don't unless I die," and he turned to go.
"Morris," she said, in a softer voice, "I am lazy, I know. Perhaps that is
why I adore people who can work. So, although you don't think
anything of me, I will do my honest best to get into sympathy with you
again; yes, and to help in any way