"Yes! Yes! How long will you be gone, Alan?"
"Heavens—how do I know? But I'll come back, don't you worry. Maybe in only a day or two of your time."
"Right! Good-by, Alan!"
"Good-by," his tiny voice echoed up. "Good-by, Babs—Father!"
Babs could see his miniature face smiling up at her. She smiled back and waved her arm as he vanished into the pebbles at her feet.
The eyes of youth! They look ahead; they see all things so easily possible! But old Dr. Kent was sobbing.
t has broken Dr. Kent. A month now has passed. He seldom mentions Alan to Babs and me. But when he does, he tries to smile and say that Alan soon will return. He has been very ill this last week, though he is better now. He did not tell us that he was working to compound another supply of the drugs, but we knew it very well.
And his emotion, the strain of it, made him break. He was in bed a week. We are living in New York, quite near the Museum of the American Society for Scientific Research. In a room of the biological department there, the precious fragment of golden quartz lies guarded. A microscope is over it, and there is never a moment of the day or night without an alert, keen-eyed watcher peering down.