St. Friend comes to us, just before the star chimes begin to ring. He steps out from the noiseless elevator and is before us while we are speaking. Avanel pets him as she does her father when she is being especially good, and the aged guest likes it, of course. He sits in the largest and easiest chair which is reserved for guests in _The Boone Ax_ room, and he hunches forward, a stooped giant. He looks through the top of his eyebrows at Avanel and he keeps time to his armchair talk, beating the arms of the chair slowly with his open hands, according to a habit from of old. He rubs his face and his old forehead with his palms as though to wake up and deliberately brings a flush to his forehead. By incessantly beating the chair and humming and hawing he seems to beat up a kind of nervous strength from some hidden source in the air and talks with increasing animation about the “strike” or “riot” or “whatever it may be called” and mentions with great complacency his measures against it. And now another curtain seems to lift from the soul of Avanel. The spirit of prophecy is upon her. The old man listens with fixed eyes. The youth of his immortal soul seems to me, in this hour of revelation, to depend upon clear speaking on the part of this young voice. She is denouncing with endless words the ironies of flying and material dreams, yet with girl slang and wit mixed in with it all. CHAPTER X THE END OF THE FLYING MACHINE RIOTS, PANICS, ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS. May 24:—Today with that same light in his eye, St. Friend preaches back at Avanel the sermon she preached to him last evening with, of course, many turns of his own. I sit with her quite close to the pulpit of the Cathedral. The place is packed to the doors. “You all know my aversion to the motion picture. It is one element in the university about which I differ from the majority of the board. If I express an equal distrust of the flying machine, you will say I am probably against all mechanical advancement. “Such advancement is but a qualified gift to man. The best wings are spirit wings, however we fly with them. It is better to be like Shelley than to have the glory of Langley and Wilbur and Orville Wright.