now, isn't it Ralph?"

"It is."

Helen sighed deeply. It suggested relief from a long, anxious strain.

"Thunder and Mars, Helen! Isn't there anything more in life for you? I
can imagine Alexander heaving that sigh when he realized that he'd done
the whole world."

"That's where Alexander and I separate. I'm relieved, not regretful."

Winston spoke with feeling.

"It must be a relief, Helen. No one has done more for this work than
you."

Helen's reply was unguarded.

"I wasn't thinking of myself."

Winston looked up in unfeigned surprise.

"You weren't?"

"Let's not talk of this now. It's finished."

"Tell me what you meant."

Helen looked at Winston. There was a suggestion of yielding in her eyes.
Her lips trembled on the verge of speech; then they set, voiceless. Why
should she tell Winston of her fears of Elijah? That, driven to
desperation, as she knew he was, she feared that in some way he would
thwart the work that was now completed.

"Sometime, perhaps; not now." She was not quite herself. "This will stay
here forever?" She evidently wished to be reassured.

"Unless something happens."

"But what can happen?" She questioned anxiously.

"A very simple thing might destroy the whole thing in an hour."

Helen's face grew white.

Winston noted the look, but failed to assign the correct reason for it.
Helen had given more to the work than he had thought.

"There's no danger, really." Winston spoke with conviction. "It's just
this. We've built a rip-rap dam with a stone facing. No amount of water
behind it can ever move it. Yet if by chance the water should flow over
the crest, it would go in an hour."

"What's to prevent it?" Helen's voice was sharp.

"The waste weir." Winston pointed to the stone paved canal on the far
side of the dam. "We know the rainfall here. That spillway will handle
twice the amount."

"But if it should become choked?"

"We have the flood gates." Winston pointed to the two great shafts that
reached up from the base of the dam, crowned with grooved wheels.

"But suppose they should get wedged so they could not be opened?"

"Then I would advise you to get out of the way! What's the matter,
Helen?" Winston grew suddenly conscious that there was more in Helen's
persistent questions than appeared on the surface.

Helen did not reply.

"Couldn't all this have been provided against?"

"Yes; but it would have cost more money than we had to put in. It's safe
enough,