"I would marry you, knowing that you could not harm my adamantine interests," laughed Bombs. "It would take a hundred years of such gentle leaven to affect them materially or immaterially and we shall both be in heaven before that time, where everything is changed in the twinkling of an eye and reforms if needed would not have to be worked out by the tedious, sinuous and rather sour or unsavory processes of fermentation." "But you would not marry me knowing that our thoughts, feelings and tastes were entirely antagonistic--that I should strive with my whole might to pull down the things you would build up? Impossible!" "I would marry you and love and admire you all the same, Adelaide. And I would give you _carte blanche_ out of the proceeds of my '_horrid_' inventions to use in your work of demolishing, reconstructing and Christianizing." "You are jesting, Mr. Bombs." She broke off and rested her head on both hands. The old weariness had come again, and more! Even the multiplicity of his adjectives affected her. They tired her to death just as his Pyro-shows used to do--with their flash after flash. "You are the same and yet you are not the same," she added, arousing herself and turning away from his glittering gaze with a gesture of despair. "O why did you come back to torment my life?" He came swiftly to her side and whispered in her ear--_whispered_, although he might have spoken aloud; for there was no one in the room and no sleeping Adam anywhere among the shrubberies "I came to fulfill my promise to your father and claim you for my wife." She started from him as though bitten by a serpent, or rather as though she had been mistaken for the original Eve and a real serpent had been whispering in her ear. "Your wife!" Her face turned surface-red as though scorched with outside flame. "Your wife," she repeated, "and the elected burden-bearer of your secret, sinful knowledge! I have never thought of being your wife and never could be or should be, and father would not have insisted." "Adelaide! Adelaide! You don't know what you are saying. You will feel differently after everything is proven and you have time to think it over." "Never! Mr. Bombs, never! I shall never think differently. Leave me! Go out of my sight forever!" "Adelaide! Is it possible! Whatever I have been to others I have always been honest with you." "Honest? Yes! You tell me of your black and sinful deeds, then try to make them look sinless and white. Leave me at once. Your presence is more than I can endure." She turned to an alcove in the far end of the room and stretching her arms high above her head in agonized supplication, she added: