velopment or poison the
peace of others. So he was able to say, after what seemed to Helen only
a natural hesitation:

"My people were both born in Germany. My mother was the daughter of the
American Consul. I was born in this country. That accounts for my being
so good a patriot."

"And I suppose it also accounts for your unusually good use of English.
Do you know you speak very correct and pure English, Mr. Bauer?"

"No, do I?"

"Yes, that is, what little you speak," said Helen with a smile. "Do you
want to know what I asked Walter in one of my letters?"

"Yes," said Bauer, blushing.

"I asked him if you spoke broken English very badly?"

Bauer did not reply to this and Helen came back to the question of his
home life.

"Do your folks live in Washington now?"

"Yes, that is"--all Bauer's self restraint could not avoid betraying
something, and Helen looked at him quickly, and her quick eager mind
could not avoid detecting something wrong. She would not for the world
have been guilty of a vulgar curiosity or an intrusion into another's
secret, and she had enough tact to say at once:

"I've always wanted to go to Washington. Father has promised to take me
some time. There must be a great deal of happiness there?"

Bauer looked at her, his great eyes calmly sad. Then he quoted:

"'Gluck und Glas wie bald bricht das?'"

Helen did not know enough German to understand.

"Would you mind translating?"

"'Happiness and glass, how soon they are broken.'"

"You mean some kinds of happiness, don't you?" asked Helen timidly.

"Yes, some kinds."

"I hope you have had some of the unbreakable kind during your visit
here?"

"Yes." But down deep in his quiet soul Felix Bauer was almost saying to
himself, "Will it be for me the heart-breaking kind of happiness?"

After another interlude, which the assertive clock took advantage of,
Helen said, "I wish you would tell me something about your work at
Burrton."

"My work?"

"Yes, your shop work. Your invention work. You know we were all terribly
disappointed that you and Walter did not get the patent. But there are a
great many other chances to discover things, aren't there?"

"Well, yes. I suppose there are." Bauer began to wake up mentally. His
face took on an alert look and the glow of the born inventor enveloped
his whole being. "You see, Miss Douglas, the field of electricity is in
one sense limitless. We know so little about it. And I suppose it is
true t