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said, “I made rather a scene, didn’t I?”
    “Rather. But why not? It’s your engine.”
    “That’s where you’re wrong.”
    “You made it.”
    “I was paid for making it.”
    “But, Jim—wasn’t there any understanding about it? I mean—you’ve worked on it a long time, haven’t you?”
    He hesitated and then said simply, “Yes. Old Blaine took me in as a kid, gave me an education, gave me a job—started to build airplane engines. This engine is almost literally the—sum of it. Well, I hate to sell it like this. That’s all.”
    “What’s Pace going to do with it?”
    Jim shrugged.
    “It’s the armament race. It’s a good engine; it’s powerful, light-weight, air-cooled and cheap to manufacture—thus desirable. I don’t mean that if any war comes along this engine’s going to decide its outcome or any such nonsense as that. No one engine—no one machine—no one tank or gun design can do that. But the next war—if war there is, which God forbid—is going to be a war in the air. Trench warfare, heavy, massed armies are a thing of the past. The whole thing in another war will be mobility. Fleets of lorries and trucks, fast-moving units; planes.” He smoked for a moment and then began to talk again. “Defense is made up of one device plus another device, plus another device. It’s the old, weighty argument of the majority being made up of one plus one plus one—repeated the most times. Well—my engine is one of those devices. That’s all.”
    “That’s—if there’s war?”
    “That’s whether there’s war or not. I’m not alone in the belief that war will be fought or peace defended in the air.”
    He leaned on the balustrade and after a moment went on as simply as if life together stretched ahead of them:
    “Sometime we’ll go up in the air together. So you can look down with me upon the panorama below—the broad fields and the wooded mountains and silver rivers. Industry; homes; freedom; all material wants spread out freely, lavishly, for the taking. That’s America. My country,” said Jim Cady, “and yours.”
    “You’re too young to have been in the war.”
    “My father was. He was killed in the Argonne. I was old enough to remember it. But then, every generation of American families since the founding of the first American colonies has had to breed soldiers. I’m talking a lot.”
    “Go on.”
    “Oh, that’s all. It just seems to me to be common sense not to sell the thing—like this. Well, they’re going to get a good price for it.”
    “How much?”
    “Two hundred thousand dollars for all patents, all plans and the model itself. Free and perpetual and exclusive use of it from now on.”
    “Are you—will you share in that?”
    There was a little pause. Then Jim said in a voice that quite suddenly held reserve and a little strain in it: “Not directly.”
    Eden waited. Instantly the complete and spontaneous understanding that made their talk possible vanished.
    Jim said—again in a reserved voice, the voice of a stranger:
    “Averill—is giving me a large block of stock. It—it sounds a bit odd. It isn’t, really. Old Blaine and I had a kind of understanding; he intended to give me a share in the company; he told me so and he told others many times. But he died and it wasn’t done. I didn’t urge it; I was busy—engrossed in work; I didn’t care. But it’s all right; I really have earned it and I know it; if Averill wants to turn it over to me in just that way, it’s all right with me. Noel and Bill both agree. It—it doesn’t really matter.”
    Except, thought Eden with flash of comprehension, that Jim was going to be under obligation to Averill for something he had actually and really earned.
    Jim went on rather abruptly:
    “You’re awfully good, you know—to listen to all this. I—forgive me, won’t you. You see you came along at a time when I—” He stopped.
    She turned toward him, waiting, and he was looking down through the dusk into