“Oh! yes. Sick talk to a sick man.” Manly snapped his fingers.
“Manly, what did you mean by saying that you had once seen your soul?” Northrup was in dead earnest. Manly swung around in his swivel chair.
“I meant that I saw mine once,” he said sharply, definitely.
“How did it look?”
“As if I had neglected it. A shrunken, shivering thing.” Manly stopped suddenly, then added briefly: “You cannot starve that part of you, Northrup, without a get-back some day.”
“No. And that’s exactly what I am up against––the get-back!”
After that talk with Manly, Northrup, singularly enough, felt as if he had arrived at some definite conclusion; had received instructions as to his direction. He was quietly elated and, sitting in his office, experienced the peace and satisfaction of one who spiritually submits to a higher Power.
The globe of light on the peak of his tower seemed, humorously, to have become his headlight––Manly’s figures of speech clung––its white and red flashes, its moments of darkness, were like the workings of his mind, but he knew no longer the old depression. He was on the main line, and he had his orders––secret ones, so far, but safe ones.
Kathryn grew more charming as time passed. She did not seem to resent Northrup’s detachment, though the tower room lured him dangerously. Once she had hinted that she’d love to see his workshop; hear some of his work. But Northrup had put her off.
“Wait, dear, until I’ve finished the thing, and then you and I will have a regular gorge of it, up in my tower.”