“I haven’t seen much of you lately, Flint,” he said. “Sit down for a few minutes, will you? I want a rest from all this for a short time; and I think it would do you good to get clear of things for a while also. What do you do with yourself at nights?” I told him that I usually worked rather late. “That won’t do as a steady thing. I know the work has to be done; and I know you have to work till midnight, and after it often, to keep abreast of things. But if you do it without a break now and again you’ll simply get stale and lose grip. You may keep on working long hours; but what you do in the end won’t be so efficient. Take to-night off. Come to dinner with me and we’ll try to shake loose from Nitrogen for a while. I’ve asked Henley-Davenport also.” I accepted eagerly enough, though with a somewhat rueful feeling that it meant harder work on the following day if I was to overtake arrears. But I wanted to meet Henley-Davenport. As I mentioned at the beginning of this narrative, before the irruption of _B. diazotans_ into the world, he had been engaged upon radioactivity investigations; and I was anxious to hear what he was doing. I knew that Nordenholt set great store by his work--he was one of the Nordenholt young men--and I was interested. But my main reason for accepting was, of course, Nordenholt himself. As time went on, he fascinated me more and more; and I grasped at every opportunity of studying his complex personality. I doubt if I have been able to throw light upon it in these pages. I have given vignettes here and there to the best of my ability; but I know that I have failed to set down clearly the feeling which he always gave me, the distinction between the surface personality and the greater forces moving behind that screen. The superficial part is easy to describe; but the noumenon of Nordenholt is a thing beyond me. I only felt it; I never saw it: and I doubt if any man ever saw it fully revealed. Just then the door of the secretary’s room opened and someone came in. Curiously enough, I had never seen Nordenholt’s secretary before. She seemed to be about twenty-four, fair-haired and slim, dressed like any other business girl; but it was her face which struck me most. She looked fragile and at the corners of the sensitive mouth I thought I saw evidences of strain. Somehow she seemed out of place amid all this grimness: her world should have been one of ease and happiness. “These are the figures you wanted with regard to A. 323, Uncle Stanley,” she said, as she handed over a card. “Thanks, Elsa. By the way, this is Mr. Flint. You’ve heard me speak of him often. My ward, Miss Huntingtower, Flint. She acts as my secretary.” We exchanged the commonplaces usual to the situation. I noticed that Nordenholt’s voice changed as he spoke to her: a ring of cheerfulness came into it which was not usually there. In a few minutes he dismissed her and we sat down again.