"Shall I see whether the Air Line has anything in your line, Phil? No? Well, what are you going to do?"
"I don't exactly know what I shall do. . . . If I had capital—enough—I think I'd start in making bulk and dense powders—all sorts; gun-cotton, nitro-powders—"
"You mean you'd like to go on with your own invention—Chaosite?"
"I'd like to keep on experimenting with it if I could afford to. Perhaps I will. But it's not yet a commercial possibility—if it ever is to be. I wish I could control it; the ignition is simultaneous and absolutely complete, and there is not a trace of ash, not an unburned or partly burned particle. But it's not to be trusted, and I don't know what happens to it after a year's storage."
For a while they discussed the commercial possibilities of Chaosite, and how capital might be raised for a stock company; but Selwyn was not sanguine, and something of his mental depression returned as he sat there by the curtainless window, his head on his closed hand, looking out into the sunny street.
"Anyway," said Lansing, "you've nothing to worry over."
"No, nothing," assented Selwyn listlessly.
After a silence Lansing added: "But you do a lot of worrying all the same, Phil."
Selwyn flushed up and denied it.
"Yes, you do! I don't believe you realise how much of the time you are out of spirits."