The Doctor hesitated. The man beside him was gray-haired as himself, a man of power, with a high, sincere purpose looking out of the haggard scraggy face and mild blue eyes,--how could he presume to advise him? Yet this Starke, he saw, had narrowed his life down to a point beyond which lay madness; and that baby had not been in life more helpless or solitary or unable than he was now, when the trial had come. The Doctor caught the bony hands in his own fat healthy ones. "I wish I could help you," he said impetuously. Starke looked in his face keenly. "For what? How?" "This engine--have you nothing to care for in life but that?" "Nothing,--nothing but that and what it will gain me." There was a pause. "If it fails?" The dark blood dyed the man's face and throat; he choked, waited a moment before he spoke. "It would not hurt me. No. I'm nearly tired out, Sir. I hardly look for success." "Will you try again?" "No, I'll not try again." He had drawn away and stood by the window, his face hidden by the curtain. The Doctor was baffled. "You have yourself lost faith in your invention?" Something of the old fierceness flashed into the man's eye, but died out. "No matter," he said under his breath, shaking his head, and putting his hand in a feeble way to his mouth. "Inanition of soul as well as body," thought the Doctor. "I'll rouse him, cruel or not." "Have you anything to which to turn, if this disappoints you? Home or friends?" He waited for an answer. When it came, he felt like an intruder, the man was so quiet, far-off. "I have nothing,--no friends,--unless I count that boy in the next room. Eh? He has fragments of the old knightly spirit, if his brain be cracked. No others." "Well, well! You'll forgive me?" said the Doctor. "I did not mean to be coarse. Only I--The matter will succeed, I know. You will find happiness in that. Money and fame will come after." The old man looked up and came towards him with a certain impressive dignity, though the snuff-colored clothes were bagging about his limbs, and his eyes were heavy and unsteady. "You're not coarse. No. I'm glad you spoke to me in that way. It is as if you stopped my life short, and made me look before and behind. But you don't understand. I"-- He put his hand to his head, then began buttoning his coat uncertainly, with a deprecating, weak smile. "I don't know what the matter is. I'm not strong as I used to be." "You need success." How strong and breezy the Doctor's voice sounded! "Cheer up, Mr. Starke. You're a stronger-brained man than I, and twenty years younger. It's something to have lived for a single high purpose like yours, if you succeed. And if not, God's life is broad, and needs other things than air-engines. Perhaps you've been 'in training,' as the street-talk goes, getting your muscles and nerves well grown, and your real work and fight are yet to come." "I don't know," said the man, dully.