“I shall be sorry to leave you, Father; but it is a chance I cannot afford to miss.” “What!” “It is my opportunity to go back. I’ve been watching for it a long time.” “But are you ready?” “What is it to be ready? I _want_ to go.” “And leave me?” “I shall find you again. And--Oh, Father!--when you come back I shall be older than you.” This idea seemed to delight him. I was still human enough to be sorry that the boy was going of his own free will; but as will _is_ free, I would not make any effort to detain him. Though young in that form, which had not yet had time to grow up in the tenuous world since he came out as a child, yet he was old in thought. “Yes,” I said, “perhaps you can help me along when I also shall be a child again.” “You see,” he went on, “with a father like Victor I shall learn all I want to know about machinery--that is, all that he can teach me; but when I am grown I shall find out for myself many things which he does not know. You remember the little machine I have been working with, up in the pattern world?” “Yes.” “When I am back on the earth I shall make it a reality. Why, it actually runs now with the electricity from my fingers!” “But will it, when you have fixed it in material form, in steel, or whatever it is to be made of?” “Yes, of course it will. It is my invention. I shall be a famous man.” “But supposing that somebody else finds it first?” “I don’t think anybody will.” “Shall I help you to lay a spell around the pattern, so that no one can touch it?” “Could you do that, Father?” “I think so.” “Then let us go up there at once,” he said, “and do it immediately. I may have to leave this world in a day or two.” I could not help smiling at the boy’s desire to hurry. Doubtless he would be present at that wedding, and I should see little or nothing of him afterwards. We went up to the pattern world, and with his assistance I drew a circle around the little machine--a spell which, I think, will protect it until he is ready to make his claim. Oh inspiration! Oh invention! Genius! Little do the men of earth know the meaning of those words. Perhaps the poet’s famous poem was sung before his birth; perhaps the engineer’s invention lay in the pattern world, protected by his spell, while he grew to manhood and advanced in science and made ready to claim it for his own, his prior and spiritual creation. Perhaps, when two men discover or invent the same thing at about the same time, one has succeeded in appropriating the design which the other left behind him when he came back to earth. Sometimes, perhaps, both have taken from the invisible the creation of a third man, who still awaits rebirth. Lionel babbled on to me about the life to come, and of what a charming mother Miss ---- would be. She had always been good to him. “Perhaps,” I said, “many of us who return almost immediately, as you hope to do, seek out those who have been good to us in a former life.”