connecting something needed for its perfection that would revolutionize the thing the machine now did (whatever it was). Harrietta refused to call him an inventor. She said it sounded so impecunious. They had known each other for six years. When she didn’t feel like talking he didn’t say: “What’s the matter?” He never told her that women had no business monkeying with stocks or asked her what they called that stuff her dress was made of, or telephoned before noon. Twice a year he asked her to marry him, presenting excellent reasons. His name was Carrigan. You’d like him.

“When I marry,” Harrietta would announce, “which will be never, it will be the only son of a rich iron king from Duluth, Minnesota. And I’ll go there to live in an eighteen-room mansion