“Still another bonbon! The ear-spectacles: a little instrument with which the deaf can hear as well as the near-sighted can see with glasses of high power.
“And still another and marvelously sweet bonbon—the inventor has called it a ‘Paradise Air-Bath’: a cabinet is filled with an artificially compounded atmosphere: ozone, compressed resinous air, tempered electrical waves, pungent carbonic acid, and a hitherto unknown material. Whoever enters this cabinet is permeated by that physical, causeless feeling of happiness such as the mountain-climber experiences on the top of the Alps, the child at play, the young person dancing: quickened pulses, heightened heart-action, expanded lungs—in short, intense joy of life.
“But to return to the mighty powers we have conquered. The question of first importance is not the creating of new possibilities of enjoyment,—the well-to-do already have a sufficiency of such things,—but rather the abolition of misery: the physical moral atmosphere of the rich would also be purified by this, since at the present time deleterious vapors of crime and illness mount up into it from the caves of poverty. We have penetrated into the bowels of the earth and have brought to light whole cargoes of radium. We have constructed the condenser, and now we have in our hands the mysterious and almost unlimited creative power which decides death and life.—Everything on which the death-dealing ray is directed, is irrevocably lost—whether it be a colony of microbes or a whole province. We can accomplish death by wholesale; we can strengthen the development of life. Radium can hasten the growth of plants threefold and make them thrice as large; it can also retard growth. According to the way it is applied, the wonder-element is the awakener of life-energy, or cripples it. We shall be enabled by means of it to lengthen the span of human life; we shall be able—but now I will desist. The line of consequences which follow a newly accomplished advance is inconceivable. The gold ingot lies before you—now go hence and coin it!”
CHAPTER XXIX
FRANKA DECIDES HER FATE
The next morning, Helmer had arranged to be at Franka’s at half-past eleven. After the American’s address, she had retired, and in bidding him goodnight, she had asked Helmer to come to see her the following morning. It was to be the last day of the Rose-Week, and she desired to consult with him about the journey and other plans for the immediate future. She had long been accustomed to ask Brother Chlodwig’s advice at the crucial moments of her life.
About nine o’clock in the morning, Helmer left the house to take his last walk to his favorite spot. He looked forward not without anxiety to the promised call upon Franka. The self-control which it cost him in repressing the ebullition of his feelings would be put to a severe test once more. For the moment, it impelled him to seek that forest quietude where he had already spent so many dreamy hours with Franka’s image before his eyes.... But then she was, if not his Franka, at least not as yet another’s.
It was a clear summer day; but in the forest, shady and cool; especially in that place where Helmer was accustomed to retire, the impression of freshness was intensified by the murmuring brook and by a spring which burst forth from a mossy rock and ran foaming and bubbling down in a series of little waterfalls. Through the lofty, thick tree-tops the sun’s rays could scarcely make their way, but here and there gleams of light fell golden along the tree-boles, making circlets on the ground and kindling sparks in the pellucid waters of the brook and the spring. Helmer selected a spot at the edge of a little wood-encircled meadow, abounding in flowers and tall grasses, and sat down at the foot of a lofty oak tree. For a time he let his thoughts run on and drank in the sweetness of the peaceful forest. Then he took out his notebook. He felt the impulse to write a few verses which might perpetuate the mood which this modest idyl had produced in his mind—a mood of calm enjoyment of nature, commingled with the sorrow of love’s renunciation.
But before he had written a line, he looked down the path by which he had come and saw a figure, clad in white, approaching. Was it possible? He sprang up and hastened to meet her.
“Franka!”
Yes, it was she. Chance had not brought her to that spot. She also had felt the call of the forest, and she had seen Helmer a hundred paces ahead of her slowly strolling along. “Let him be my guide,” she had said to herself, and followed him, not diminishing the distance between them. Now he reached his goal; she saw him sit down in the grass and prepare to write; by this time, however, she had caught up with him, and now they were face to face. She stretched out her hand in greeting.