Noakes leaned over a stand in one of the Maxineff laboratories and looked intently into a crucible, while he advanced the lever of a control-switch regulating the furnace beneath it. He held a steady hand on the lever, so that he might push it back instantly if he saw in the crucible too sudden a transformation. As he watched, the dull saffron powder took on a deeper hue about the edge, the body of it remaining unchanged. For several minutes he peered with keen intentness at the evil, inert little mass. No further change appeared. He leaned closer over it, regardless of the thin choking haze that spread about his face. In his attitude there was a rigidity of controlled excitement out of keeping with the seeming harmlessness of the experiment. He was as a man attuned to a tremendous hazard, anticipation and mental endurance taut, all his force focused on one throbbing desire. He bent closer, and the hand on the lever trembled in nervous premonition. The deepened hue touched only the edge, following regularly the contour of the vessel; it made no advance toward the centre of the substance. 'It shall!' Noakes breathed; and as if conning an oft-repeated formula, he said, 'The entire mass should deepen in color, regularly and evenly. Heat! Heat!' His glance shifted to the control-switch under his hand. Its metal knobs, marking the degrees of intensity of the current it controlled, caught the light and blinked like so many small, baleful eyes. Particularly one, that which would be capped next in the orbit of the lever, held him fascinated; the winking potentiality of it thralled him, as the troubled crystal devours the gaze of the Hindu magi. He jerked back his head decisively; he would increase the current. The thought burned before him like a live thing; and in the light of it he saw many pictures--heliographs of happenings in and about the laboratories: flame, smoke dense and turgid, splintered wood, metal hurtling through air, bleeding hands, lacerated breasts, sightless eyes. 'That's the trouble with high explosives,' he half groaned. He turned away from the stand and went to the single window that lit the room. Through it he saw shops, store-houses, and small buildings similar to his own, all a part of the plant of Maxineff. He thought of each small laboratory as a potential inferno, each experimenter a bondman to ecstasy, the whole frenzied, gasping scheme a furtherance of the fame and power of Henry Maxineff, already world-known, inventor of the deadliest high explosives. One of the buildings had been turned into a temporary hospital. He thought of the pitiful occupant--his face scarred, one socket eyeless--and shivered. 'It isn't that I want to hedge,' he said. 'I shall take the chance; but having risked everything, I will go to her able and whole, offering it all without an apology.'