“No,” agreed Dr. Crossett. “Romanoff, Thailer, Woodstock, eh?”
“Yes, but the application is new, and also I have here a Mercury Turbine Interrupter of my own invention. I can get over thirty thousand more interruptions a second than were ever before obtained. With it I have never once failed. It was the great high frequency by which I won my battle. It is ready now to show to the world.”
“Ah! Your theory—it is pretty.”
“It is true.”
“Then,” exclaimed Dr. Crossett, “there need be no more of this.” He looked contemptuously around the shabby room and out through the window at the noisy, squalid neighborhood.
“To live as New York lives! It is not civilization. It is like the cave man, to live in a hole in a cliff. Bah! To sit on an ugly chair, and to look at nothing, out of dirty windows!”
“New York,” laughed Dr. Barnhelm, “is the great market place of the world. You can buy anything here, even beautiful surroundings.”
“Then you, Martin, shall buy them. This,” he touched the electrical apparatus almost tenderly, “will bring fame and wealth. Happiness you had before.”
“It has been selfish of me in a way, Paul,” began the Doctor, as though trying to find excuses to satisfy his own conscience, “but Lola has not minded. She is as Helen was. If she is surrounded by love and tenderness, she is content. She does not ask fortune for many of her favors.”
“She does not need them, Martin.”