During these tedious delays, in which his heart had vibrated between hope and fear, he had found his way every afternoon to Margaret's studio, Nathan having gone home to Kennedy Square with his head in the clouds when the negotiations became a certainty. In these weeks of waiting the Northern girl had not only stolen his heart, taking the place of a daughter he had never known--a void never filled in any man's soul--but she had satisfied a craving no less intense, the hunger for the companionship of one who really understood his aims and purposes. Nathan had in a measure met this need as far as unselfish love and unswerving loyalty could go; and so had his dear wife, especially in these later years, when her mind had begun to grasp the meaning of the social and financial changes that the war had brought, and what place her husband's inventions might hold in the new regime. But no one of these, not even Nathan, had ever understood him as clearly as had this young girl. When it grew too dark to paint, he would make her sit on a stool at his feet, while he would talk to her of his life work and of the future as he saw it--often of things which he had kept shut away in his heart even from Nathan. He would tell her of the long years of anxiety; of the sleepless nights; of his utter loneliness, without a friend to guide him, while he was trying to solve the problems that had blocked his path; of the poverty of these late years, all the more pitiful because of his inability at times to buy even the bare materials and instruments needed for his work; and, again, of his many disappointments in his search for the hoped-for link that was needed to make his motor a success. Once, in lowered tones and with that eager, restless expression which so often came into his face when standing over his work-bench in his little shop, baffled by some unsolved problem, he told her of his many anxieties lest some other brain groping along the same paths should reach the goal before him; how the Scientific Review, the one chronicle of the discoveries of the time, would often lie on his table for hours before he had the courage to open it and read the list of patents granted during the preceding months, adding, with a voice full of gentleness, "I was ashamed of it all, afterward, my dear, but Mrs. Horn became so anxious over our daily expenses, and so much depended on my success." This brave pioneer did not realize, nor did she, that they were both valiant soldiers fighting the good fight of science and art against tradition and provincialism--part of that great army of progress which was steadily conquering the world! As she listened in the darkening shadows, her hand in his, her fingers tight about his own, he, reading the sympathy of her touch, and fearing to have distressed her by his talk, had started up, and in his cheery, buoyant voice cried out: