He looked at her in a scared way out of the corner of his eye, child-fashion, as though to make sure she was loyal and worthy of confidence, and then he said:
"I invent 'em. I have written a treatise on guns of large caliber."
"Really?" cried Zora, taken by surprise. She had not credited him with so serious a vocation. "Do tell me something about it."
"Not now," he pleaded. "Some other time. I'd have to sit down with paper and pencil and draw diagrams. I'm afraid you wouldn't like it. Wiggleswick doesn't. It bores him. You must be born with machinery in your blood. Sometimes it's uncomfortable."
"To have cogwheels instead of corpuscles must be trying," said Zora flippantly.
"Very," said he. "The great thing is to keep them clear of the heart."
"What do you mean?" she asked quickly.
"Whatever one does or tries to do, one should insist on remaining human. It's good to be human, isn't it? I once knew a man who was just a complicated mechanism of brain encased in a body. His heart didn't beat; it clicked and whirred. It caused the death of the most perfect woman in the world."
He looked dreamily into the blue ether between sea and sky. Zora felt strangely drawn to him.
"Who was it?" she asked softly.