As with every other man, he had used the word "hate," but he had never understood it. Now he knew that it had a very special and exact meaning, and he could have defined it with precision--not in words, perhaps, but by acts which speak with an eloquence words can never hope to achieve. One can describe with words a sunset, a hurricane, the eruption of a volcano. But when one is done there is nothing but vowels and consonants arranged in a certain order. They may convey a suggestion, but no more. A printed page, no matter from what master's hand, remains a printed page. It is not sunset, hurricane, volcano. So with hate. It cannot be stamped upon paper; it can be indicated by conventional signs; but those conventional signs mean nothing but a vague hint to the individual who has not experienced the _thing_. Potter Waite experienced it. He hated Cantor, and when that is said words have reached their limit in denoting that human emotion which is the reverse of love. But he did not act. He worked. No man who has not waited through days of construction to see a new mill begin the business of its existence, to see the shafts revolve, carrying with them their multitude of pulleys, communicating energy from the power-plant to the machine of production, does not know impatience. He is looking forward to the day when machines, perfect and exact for their appointed work, shall produce a concrete thing that can be seen and felt. It is not enough to know that each day brings nearer the concrete thing. No man but a mill man, skilled in such matters, knows what delays intervene, what errors creep in, what changes have to be made--and what a pall of anxiety hangs over the whole.... Once there was a mill which started up and ran flawlessly when it was completed. The residence of that mill is in a fairy-tale.... In early September the strain of anxiety was everywhere present in the huge rooms which were to turn out the motor of victory. There was a breathlessness, an apprehension, a realization that something was wrong, and a sense that things more catastrophic were gestating in the womb of the future. _Something was wrong._ Engineers, superintendents, machinists, were given to sudden ravings. Small things caused a condition of constant irritation; an occasional big thing brought down an avalanche of consternation. Men did not say that _something_ was wrong; they said _somebody_ was wrong. And somebody _was_ wrong.