The new factory was at Willesden Junction, which I reached regularly every morning by the 8.10 from Earl's Court Road, returning home to the little house in Kensington about seven. It was a long day, made longer by the railway journey at each end. The present equipment was on a comparatively small scale, future expansion depending largely on what it was to be hoped our laboratory could accomplish. Two young English chemists, graduates of a technical school, were assigned to work with me. The rest of the research staff included a machinist and pipe fitter, a general utility girl, a glass blower to make special apparatus, and Chitty.

The latter I ruthlessly took from his duties as general house man to do odd jobs for me. He gloried in his new work, for he had a positive awe of chemistry. To him it was the last word in the mysterious achievements of the educated human intellect. With his awe was a wholesome fear of possible eventualities. There was not a day that it wasn't his secret belief that we should all be blown to atoms. Nevertheless, on the rare occasions when minor accidents did occur, he was the first person I found standing at my elbow. I sometimes amused myself by devising harmless bangs or unexpected puffs of smoke, to see Chitty come on the run to my side. The day I really spilt some acid on myself, I thought the man would get his hands badly burned before I could stop him from tearing my clothes off. He was, however, like a perfectly trained dog. A sharp word of command brought him up all standing. I saved his hands from serious burns and got out of my clothes without damage to myself.

"Chitty," I said another time, "if this place ever gets on fire you are to get out the first window without delay."

"Not until I see you going, sir, thank you," he replied. And he meant it.

On pleasant Saturday afternoons, during the early autumn, Helen came out to meet me. Chitty used to prepare my luncheons for me every day; on Saturdays he catered for two. His army training taught him to use any utensils handy, and Helen laughed until the tears came at finding his kitchen a series of Bunsen burners, his crockery mainly Meissen ware and Bohemian glass beakers. He could cook sausages and grill tomatoes fit for an epicure. It was true his range was strictly limited, being restricted to what might be put in a frying pan or plain boiled, but within its limits it was unexcelled.

Luncheon over, we would take the train back and prowl about for an hour or two before tea or see a matinee from the pit. Our finances made it necessary for us to keep to simple pleasures. Still, by saving all our pennies for Saturdays and Sundays we did ourselves surprisingly well. During the week the company paid for my railway ticket and luncheons. Thus the week-end found us with thirty or a few more shillings to spend. In those pre-war days two could do a lot in London on thirty shillings. For example, if we wished to be really extravagant and "go a bust" we lunched at Kettner's for 3/6 each, table d'h?te, total 7 shillings—a shilling for the waiter—eight; a bottle of table chianti, 3 bob; or eleven in all, leaving nineteen shillings over. Setting aside a half crown for tea, we still had 16/6. Suppose we went to a pit—half a crown apiece; total, 5 shillings—we yet were rich with eleven and six remaining. Plenty over for Sunday, especially if we took luncheon with us from home. We did not lack for clothes; Helen's trousseau would last a long time—and the next year the company was going to pay dividends.

Meanwhile there was one deep disappointment mixed with our improvident happiness. I had no time for writing or even for keeping in touch with my theatrical and literary friends. They had begun by dropping in at the house, never to find me at home, and in a few months a caller for us was rare. My absence in America had broken a good many threads, and there was no opportunity to spin new ones. The work and friendships we had planned to do and form together while riding over the hills of Deep Harbor could not be done and formed. I had to live and think chemistry. The evenings were rarely free, for laboratory reports of the day's work had to be prepared then. The week-ends were so precious that Helen and I could not spare them for anything but our own companionship.

Along with the first fogs, in November, I realized that the work at the laboratory was getting on slowly. I had not yet been able to begin quantity production. My father called one day to ask me to look over the special expenditures on behalf of research. He wanted to know if economies were not possible, and where I thought we were going. For many hours I reviewed the accounts and the results to date, as set down in the laboratory diary and reports. There was nothing to show on the side of practical accomplishments. The experiments gave evidence we were on the right track; it was equally clear we had not arrived. The German process worked well on a small scale with carefully selected chemicals; it did not work at all on a commercial scale.

"Well, Ted, what are we going to do about it?" my father inquired at the end of my survey. "My associates are getting restless; we have spent a great deal of money. What have we to show for it?"

I turned over my notes again, as one does in such cases, hoping some overlooked solution will leap from the pages.

"I am certain I can do it," I said.

"When? And how much will it cost?"

"That I can't say. It may be tomorrow—it may be next month. The answer perhaps is filtering now in the next room, or it may be a question of several weeks' experiment."

"Not good enough, Ted."

"You told me it would be a year before you expected results."

"A year before we paid dividends. If you can't begin manufacture, how can you expect to make a profit? Your experiments have eaten a deep hole in our resources, and we are where we were at the beginning. In short, Ted, if you don't tell me you are ready to manufacture before the next three months are up, we'll have to close down."

"We might get one of the Germans over and let him have a look at what I'm doing." I went into the next room and came back with a sample. "Here is the stuff—I make it every day in there. But when it goes through in quantity downstairs, I can't get it."

"What are you doing about it?"

"Analyzing all our raw materials to see if I can trace the probable impurity that is blocking us. The apparatus downstairs has been tested and examined a dozen times. I can find nothing the matter there. I thought, at first, lubricating oil might be leaking into the mixers."

"Suppose you can't find the cause?"

I shrugged. "If the world comes to an end, there's not much good planning what you will do. There is a cause, and I've got to find it. There's nothing mysterious about it. Such matters are a problem of elimination. You must be careful not to overlook any possibility. In the end you run it down—corner it. But it may take time."

"Is there any possibility our German friends have done us?"

"I've thought of that. Yet if that is the case, why the devil does the stuff come out all right on a small scale? Here it is in my hand. There is such a thing. They haven't faked it—there it is."

"Will you write a special report tonight for me to show the board of directors tomorrow?"

"Yes. You still own the controlling interest, don't you?"

"Up till now I do," my father replied. "I may have to let that go, Ted, if you don't find the answer soon."

I gave up my Saturday afternoons and often my Sundays. The answer did not appear. All this was hard on Helen. The family tension did not tend to relax in the face of our difficulties at the factory. My own nerves were being stretched taut, and I had to fight to keep Helen from noticing too much the strain I was under. I laid off my two assistant chemists, to reduce expenses. Their help had never been valuable except for doing routine things. Occasionally, when there was an experiment on that couldn't be left unfinished, I worked at Willesden until late at night. It was Helen's calm faith in me that kept me at it and gave me self-control. I talked little with her—or with any one—about this damned problem, preferring, with her, to read and dream as we had always done; and I kept my mouth shut as far as possible before my father, to prevent his noting that I was badly frightened. Chitty realized that I had a facer. His anxiety was pathetic; I would look up from an experiment and find him watching my face eagerly, to see if now I had a ray of hope. Of course, Helen knew why I did not come home on Saturday afternoons, but her confidence kept her so optimistic she scarcely worried at all. I cursed German chemistry from A to Z before Chitty; elsewhere I was grimly silent on the subject.

My mother in no wise changed her attitude; Helen was treated with the formality of a guest, and I should have worried more than I did about this if I had not discovered by accident that she was closeted with Sims a great part of each day in her own room making baby clothes. Poor mother, how happy she could have made Helen by letting her know this! But she didn't. Helen sat all day working in her room on little things, and my mother in hers, and neither woman spoke to the other of what she was doing. "While I'm seeking answers to chemical riddles, I wish some one would explain to me the riddle of human nature," I thought to myself. One night I decided to act on this idea and seek the latter answer for myself. I went to my mother's room.

"What do you wish, Ted?" she asked as I sat down. It had been a great many years since we had exchanged any confidences face to face. Her devotion to me had always alarmed me—it put me off when I came near her. I knew I didn't think as she thought, and I was afraid a misunderstanding hopeless to reconcile would come. It sounds paradoxical, I know—that I should fear her love to the point that I believed it dangerous—but so it was. "If we ever really quarrel," I had said to myself, "nothing on earth will patch it up." So it came about that for years I had avoided intimacy with her, preferring a queer aloofness to any attempt at understanding, since by nature we were such opposites.

"I shan't pretend, mother. It's about Helen," I said in answer to her question.

"What about Helen?" my mother replied coldly.

I wondered what to say. She sat there looking at me calmly, but there was a hardness in her expression which indicated that all defences were fully manned. "I'll make a mess of it—get the worst of it, I know, and go out of here thoroughly in the wrong," I said to myself. "But, damn it all, I ought to be able to think of the right thing."

"You wished to speak to me about Helen?"

"Helen likes you," I blurted out, at the same time realizing I had made the worst of all possible starts.

"She has only to tell me this herself." My mother's voice was level.

"Would it do any good?" I blundered on.

"I am sure I have not the least idea what you mean, Ted. I think it would be much better if you went up to your own room."

I began to be desperate. There ought to be some facial flag of truce, indicating unconditional surrender, that one could wave with a look. At that moment I would have given anything, except Helen's love, to have my mother relent. Instead, she picked up a book and made an elaborate show of reading. I meditated flying into a childish rage, thus forcing the issue, but I was so truly hurt and angry I didn't dare. I knew I should probably say something I should afterwards regret. I got upon my feet.

"I am sorry you do not approve of my marriage, mother"—adding mistake number three to the two I was certain I had made.

"It is not for me to approve or disapprove of your marriage, Edward. I was not consulted. It is no affair of mine."

"Of course, you don't mean it," I said. "That remark is silly enough to have been made by me." I was quite appalled at my boldness, but anger was fast mastering me.

"I do not wish to have any further discussion with you on this subject, either now or in the future. Whatever else you learned in Deep Harbor, it wasn't manners."

"Rot!" I exclaimed. She lifted her eyebrows and turned a page. I stood a second irresolute. "I mean I didn't intend to be rude—you know what I mean—only you won't admit it."

"I don't expect an apology. Good night, Edward."

"Now you've done it, you blithering idiot," I said as I clumped upstairs to Helen. "I knew I'd end in the wrong." Helen gently told me, at the conclusion of my story, words to the same effect.

"Am I a blithering idiot, Helen dear?"

"No, sweetheart, you are just a boy," was Helen's exit line for this episode.

Our second Christmas together was drawing near, and it promised to be far different from the one we had looked forward to the year before. The factory problem was still unsolved; the building which my father had anticipated would be humming with prosperous activity stood silent. Only in the laboratory upstairs was there any work being done, labour which still seemed but a beating of the air. I had called in more than one consulting chemist; they merely suggested that I do the things I had been doing. The advice from Germany was to the same effect. Analyze and search for the cause among the raw materials. I had outside analyses made on these, to check my own by, and no clue developed. The board of directors called upon me collectively and singly to offer the inane suggestions which non-technical men always make when they wish to be helpful over a technical matter.

A week before Christmas I sat staring at samples of my raw materials spread over the laboratory table. Chitty was rinsing test tubes at the sink.

"It does beat the devil, Chitty," I said, "to think that the answer to all our trouble is staring right at us from one of these heaps of samples, and we can't find it."

"Yessir," Chitty agreed. "Don't give up, sir; 'ave another try."

I looked at my watch. It was three o'clock; the short winter day was already dusk without. A London and Northwestern express screeched past our windows.

"I'd like my overcoat, please, Chitty. I'm going home." A queer, startled look came into his face.

"You're not giving up, Mister Edward? You won't tell them you're beaten? 'Ave another shot at your last experiment. I don't mind working late tonight, sir."

"Chitty," I said, "sometimes it pays to cut your losses and start afresh. We're up a blind passage. Let's turn round and walk out of it."

He helped me into my great coat with a doubtful air.

"Don't let them say it's done you in, sir," he said. "Come back tomorrow morning. You never know your luck, sir."

"I'll be here at the usual time, Chitty." And with this I left him.

My father, luckily, was in when I got back to Kensington. I saw him studying me carefully as I came into the library and sat down. He laid aside his pipe and waited. I was in no hurry to begin speaking.

"Discouraged, Ted?" my father at last inquired.

"No. I'm through."

"That sounds rather tragic, Ted. Just what do you mean?"

"I have been thinking this thing over. We've reached an absolutely blank wall. I can neither climb over it, tunnel under it, nor walk around it."

"Facts, please," my father interrupted. "Cut your rhetoric." I gave him a brief recapitulation of my failure, together with my reasons for believing that it was no use going on doing the same useless experiments over and over again. He listened patiently, without giving any sign of emotion.

"It doesn't make pleasant telling," I ended, "to confess one has failed."

"Have you your laboratory notebooks and diary here?"

"Yes," I admitted, "but they won't mean anything to you—they are mainly full of chemical formulae and abbreviated notes."

"Nevertheless, I wish to see them."

I went out to my bag in the passage and brought them in.

"I'm not a scientist, Ted, but it isn't common sense that an experiment which you can do on a small scale should fail on a large scale. You have overlooked something."

"Shall I stay and explain my notes to you?"

"No, go upstairs and talk to Helen."

I came down to dinner very glum. Helen had done her best to buck me up; this time, however, even she had failed to restore my confidence. To my surprise, my father was all smiles, hinting the while at mysterious delights to come. I thought he was trying to cheer me up—an annoying thing to have any one do when one has resolved to be miserable.

"How would you and Helen like to have a little trip all by yourselves at Christmas—say to Winchester? It will do Helen good, if you are careful not to let her get tired." This he had saved up for dessert. Helen and I stared at each other, not entirely certain he wasn't having a joke at our expense.

"I'm serious, children," he added. "Your mother and I—with Frances, of course—are going down to Hayling Island. I want to get in some golf."

"I thought we were hard up," I growled, not rid of my suspicions.

"Well, we've enough for that, I think, Ted. The plant will be running full blast in January."

I sat up. "What have found out from my notes? Don't deceive yourself, father."

He laughed uproariously. "Thanks for the advice. But, Ted, I'm an old newspaper man, and I spent a good many years finding out things I was not supposed to know about. When I went over your notes I observed something I think you have missed."

My face burned. If true, of course it meant I was a damned incompetent person to trust with a responsible job. I felt Helen's hand on my knee.

"It isn't your fault, Ted—don't look so melodramatic. Now listen to me. You have tested and analyzed all your raw materials—and have bought different lots of them from various sources?"

"Yes—I have been all over the market for them."

"But you have bought your most important reagent—a commercial acid—from only one particular firm. Did you analyze that acid?"

"No."

"I thought not. There was no record of it in your books."

The sensation of feeling an utter fool is not comfortable. It was the even pressure of Helen's hand on my knee that kept me from an outburst. The instant my father had asked me the question about the acid, I knew he had found the only untested link. But why in the name of all that is intelligent had I missed it? Simply because I had been working on the set idea that the raw materials furnished contained somewhere an impurity, and I had taken the reagent on faith.

"Well," my father called out gaily, "is the old man right?"

"You are right, and I have been wrong."

"Damn it, Ted, don't be so ridiculous with that long jaw. It's all in the family. Take a week off with Helen and come back fresh to your job. You went a bit stale, that's all."

"My going stale has cost you a lot of money," I muttered.

"Experience always costs money, Ted. I don't grudge paying for it, if one really learns from it. You told me something about the process of elimination once. The next time you eliminate, go all th............