The Ambassador received his caller in his study. From across the hall, Barbara, through the half-open door, could see the expert's huge form filling an arm-chair, where the limpid light of the desk-lamp fell on his heavy, colorless face. The walls were lined with bookshelves and curtains of low tone, and against this formless background his big profile stood out pallid and hawk-like. She could hear his voice distinctly. Its even, dead flatness affected her curiously; it was not harsh, but absolutely without tone-quality or sympathy. For some time the talk was on casual topics and she occupied herself listlessly with a tray of photographs on the table. She read their titles, smiling at the extraordinary intricacies of "English as she is Japped" by the complaisant oriental photographer: _The Picking Sea-Ear at Enoshima_; _East-looking Panorama of Fuji Mount_; _Geisha in the Famous Dance of Maple-Leaf_. The smile left her face. Something had been said in the farther room which caught her attention and in a moment she found herself listening intently. "I understand the trials of the new powder have been very successful," the Ambassador was saying. "Is it destined to revolutionize warfare, do you think?" "It is too soon to tell yet," was the reply, "just what the result will be. It will enormously increase the range of projectiles, as Your Excellency may guess, and its area of destruction will nearly double that of lyddite." Barbara felt, rather than saw, that the Ambassador gave a little shudder. "I can imagine what that means," he said. "I saw Port Arthur after the siege. So war is to grow more dreadful still! When will it cease, I wonder." "Never," Bersonin answered, with a cold smile. "It is the love of power that makes war, and that, in man, is inherent and ineradicable. A nation is only the individual in the aggregate, and selfishness is the guiding gospel of both." To Barbara the words seemed coldly, cruelly repellant. She felt a sudden quiver of dislike run over her. "You paint a sorry picture," said the Ambassador. "Can human ingenuity go much further, then? What, in your opinion, will be the fighting engine of the future?" "The engine of the future"--Bersonin spoke deliberately--"will be along other lines. It will be an atomic one. It will employ no projectile and no armor plate will resist it. The discoverer will have harnessed the law of molecular vibration. As there is a positive force that binds atoms together, so there must be a negative force that, under certain conditions, can drive them apart!" He spoke with what seemed an extraordinary conviction. His manner had subtly changed. For the first time his tone had gathered something like feeling, and the dry, metallic voice seemed to Barbara to vibrate with a curious, gloating triumph.