He was not so poor! The life of his affections was not less rich than Odette's, nor were the struggles of his mind less lively--though he said nothing about them. Nor were his feelings less violent, though their ardor tended in another direction. Yes, he was indifferent to the things that occupied these women. His spirit was agitated, however, by very different passions. Intellectually richer and much less absorbed by the more backward life of his senses, this little man, who felt the obscure flood of desire rising in him, was turning his energies, like a true man, towards action and domination. He dreamed of conquests beside which that of a feminine heart would have seemed to him very paltry--if at this time of his childhood he had thought of such a thing. The boys of the preceding generations had dreamed of soldiers, savages, pirates, Napoleon, adventures on the sea. Marc dreamed of aeroplanes, automobiles and wireless. About him the thought of the world danced a giddy round; a delirious movement made the planet vibrate; everything was running and flying, cleaving the air and the waters, revolving, whirling. A magic of mad invention was transmuting the elements. No more limits to power; consequently, no more to the will. Space and time--pass the juggler's ball!--were volatilized, spirited away by the swiftness of things. They did not count any more. And men still less. What counted was will, limitless will. Marc scarcely knew the rudiments of modern science. He read, without understanding it, a scientific review to which his mother subscribed; but without realizing it he had been bathed from his birth in the miracles of science. Annette did not perceive this, for she had learned science in the scholastic way; she had not breathed it in as a living thing. She saw the figures written in chalk and the numbers on the blackboard, the arguments. Marc's imagination was filled with fabulous forces. Just because he was not embarrassed by his reason he was carried away by a poetic enthusiasm as vague and ardent as that which filled the sails of the Argonauts. He dreamed of extraordinary exploits: piercing the globe with a tunnel from one side to the other, rising without motor-power into the air, connecting Mars with the earth, pressing a button and jumping over to Germany--or some other country (he had no particular preference). With such mysterious words as volts, amperes, radium, carburator, which he used at random, very coolly, he conjured up the tales of the Thousand and One Nights. How the devil could his mind stoop from such a height to a silly little girl?