“Nothing but a rose,” repeated Adelaide; “but a rose is a great deal, Mr. Bombs. It is beauty, fragrance and color—soft and restful color.”
“O! I understand. I know you don’t like fireworks, nor much of anything as yet—that is in the line of human invention.”
“I like human inventions but I don’t like inhuman ones that dazzle my eyes out. I think they would make me stone blind if I had to look at them long at a time.”
Mr. Bombs looked at her fixedly while he continued to sip the wine. He noticed for the first time that her eyes were of the palest blue and her hair of the palest gold and wondered if there was anything in her physical makeup that made it naturally antagonistic to fiery display. “Did the doves hate fireworks and did the serpents like them?” was the question he asked himself.
“Perhaps you will like my new piece better,” he remarked after he had finished the wine. “Tourbillions are a higher form of Pyro.”
“When is your new piece going to be spoken?” laughed Adelaide.
“At the end, of course. You hadn’t better retire—it might wake you up. It will be huge, Miss Adelaide.”
“The bigger they are the more I don’t like them, Mr. Bombs. The little ones tire me and the big ones scare me. You know how I screamed when that horrid London Pyro-King sent off his biggest rockets. They looked so dangerous—as though a terrible comet or electric storm were crashing into the earth to destroy it. Is your new piece dangerous, Mr. Bombs?”
“Not very, I hope, Miss Adelaide.”
“You mean that it is a little dangerous, Mr. Bombs. Now I want to know if you don’t think there are dangerous things enough in the world without inventing any more?”