"There has always been 'something else' in our environment,--something that stupid humanity has taken centuries to discover. Sound-waves for example--light-rays,--electricity--these have been freely at our service from the beginning. Electricity might have been used ages ago, had not dull-witted man refused to find anything better for lighting purposes than an oil-lamp or a tallow candle! If, in past periods, he had been told 'there is something else'--he would have laughed his informant to scorn. So with our blundering methods of living--'there is something else'--not after death, but NOW and HERE. We are going about in the darkness with a candle when a great force of wider light is all round us, only awaiting connection and application to our uses." Those who heard him speak in this way--(and they were few, for Seaton seldom discussed his theories with others)--convinced themselves that he was either a fool or a madman,--the usual verdict given for any human being who dares break away from convention and adopt an original line of thought and action. But they came to the conclusion that as he was direfully poor, and nevertheless refused various opportunities of making money, his folly or his madness would be brought home to him sooner or later by strong necessity, and that he would then either arrive at a sane every-day realisation of "things as they are"--or else be put away in an asylum and quietly forgotten. This being the sagacious opinion of those who knew him best, there was a considerable flutter in such limited American circles as call themselves "upper" when the wealthiest young woman in the States, Morgana Royal, suddenly elected to know him and to bring him into prominent notice at her parties as "the most wonderful genius of the time"--"a man whose scientific discoveries might change the very face of the globe"--and other fantastically exaggerated descriptions of her own which he himself strongly repudiated and resented. Gossip ran amok concerning the two, and it was generally agreed that if the "madman" of science were to become the husband of a woman multi-millionaire, he would not have to be considered so mad after all! But the expected romance did not materialise,--there came apparently a gradual "cooling off" in the sentiments of both parties concerned,--and though Roger Seaton was still occasionally seen with Morgana in her automobile, in her opera-box, or at her receptions, his appearances were fewer, and other men, in fact many other men, were more openly encouraged and flattered,--Morgana herself showing as much indifference towards him as she had at first shown interest. When, therefore, he suddenly left the social scene of action, his acquaintances surmised that he had got an abrupt dismissal, or as they more brusquely expressed it--"the game's up"! "He's lost his chance!" they said, shaking their heads forlornly--"And he's poorer than Job! He'll be selling newspapers in the cars for a living by and by!"