Both of these letters reached Walter about the same time and he read and reread them and received vast help from them, more than he himself knew at the time. But he could not throw off the feeling of depression and fear that seemed to haunt his spirit. He longed to talk the thing over with someone and the day after his father's letter came, he resolved to take Bauer into his confidence. He had never talked with him on any serious questions except when Bauer had confided in him about his home troubles, and the occasions were rare and only occurred at times when Bauer was so tortured with lonesomeness that he could not endure it any longer and fled to Walter as he did that night in the shop, when he first appealed to him for his friendship. They had gone up to Walter's room together; and had just finished a discussion over Bauer's incubator and the arrangement for the thermostat when Walter said suddenly: "Felix, I can't talk this stuff any longer. I want to take up something else, if you don't mind. Of course, you've noticed I've not been up to the mark lately, haven't you?" "Yes." Bauer blushed as he said it. He had noted Walter's condition, but if truth be told his own state of hopeless feeling towards Helen had absorbed him to such an extent that he had not paid the attention to Walter's feelings that he otherwise might. No one quite so egotistic as your hopeless lover. The world of Bauer revolved around the star of Helen, and the rest of the universe, including Walter, was for the time being not counted as there. With Walter's trouble now made more apparent to him, Bauer's mind at once waked up and stood ready alert to listen to him. "I might as well confess that Dr. Powers's address two weeks ago knocked the props out from under me. What he said cut under me like a great engine that destroyed my faith." "You mean your faith in God?" asked Bauer in a tone almost of horror. "Well, no, not that exactly. I don't think anyone could reason me out of a belief in a God. But when Dr. Powers got through I felt as if all the God he believed in was a kind of electrical force, a little bigger unit of amperes. A sort of international ampere, so to speak, but not much more." "Do you mean that you can't say 'Our Father' any more?" Walter was silent half a minute. When he looked up at Bauer his face was haggard. "I haven't prayed any since that address. What is the use of prayer if God is a machine?" "But if God is a machine, who made the machine?" Walter stared. Bauer went on. "And if God is only high power electricity or force, who made the high power or force? One machine can't make another. And a machine that really thinks and plans, is not a machine but a Being." Walter did not answer. He was brooding. Finally he said: "Do you really believe in miracles and the superhuman and the resurrection and future and--and a Personal Redeemer and all that?"