'I tell you, Jimmy,' he confided, leaning forward towards his friend, 'to look into the faces of these people is the greatest relief I have known for twelve months. Just at first, when war broke out, one didn't notice much change, in England especially, but latterly there has been no mistaking it. Wherever you went, in the streets or the restaurants, you could see the writing in the faces of the people, a sort of dumb repression of feeling, just as though they were trying to get through the task of every-day life because they had to, eating and drinking because they had to, talking, amusing themselves, even, with an absent feverishness all the time--unnatural. I tell you it's like being in some sort of a dream to be in London or Paris to-day. It's only to-night I've felt myself back amongst real men and women again, and it's good.' Moreton nodded understandingly. 'A fellow was writing something of the sort in one of the Sunday papers last week,' he remarked. 'Over here, of course, the whole thing to us is simply pictorial. We don't realize or appreciate what is happening. We can't.' 'And yet some day,' Lavendale sighed, 'we shall have to go through it ourselves.' 'One of your Harvard theories cropping up again!' 'It's more than a theory now--it's a certainty,' Lavendale insisted. 'One doesn't need to brood, though. There's plenty of real life buzzing around us all the time. Do you know why I sent you that wireless, Jim?' 'Not an idea on earth,' the other admitted. 'I guess I was conceited enough to hope that you wanted to see me again.' 'That's so, anyway,' Lavendale assured him, 'and you know it, but apart from that I want you to do something for me. I want to meet your uncle.' 'I'll do what I can,' Moreton promised, a little dubiously. 'He isn't the easiest person to get at, as you know.' 'Where is he now?' Lavendale inquired. 'I haven't had a line from him or my aunt for months,' Moreton replied, 'but the papers say he is coming to New York to-night.' 'Is there anything in these sensational reports about his new discovery?' Lavendale asked eagerly. 'I shouldn't be surprised,' the other confessed. 'There is no doubt that he is giving up his laboratories and closing down in the country. He told me himself, last time I saw him, that the thing he'd been working at, off and on, for the last thirty years, was in his hands at last, perfect. He's through with inventing--that's how he put it to me. He is going to spend the rest of his days reading dime novels in the mornings and visiting cinemas in the afternoons--says his brain's tired.' 'I shouldn't wonder at that,' Lavendale observed. 'He was seventy-two last year, wasn't he? I wonder how long he'll keep his word, though.' 'He seems in earnest. He has been very cranky lately, and they were all terrified down at Lakeside that he'd blow the whole place up.' 'You don't know any particulars about this last invention, I suppose?'