It will be a good excuse for keeping her at a distance afterwards." Then he lost his temper; indeed, he raved, and stormed, and nearly smashed the patent receiver in his fury.

To a scientific man, let it be admitted, it was nothing short of maddening to be told that the successful working of his instrument, to the manufacture of which he had given eight years of toil and study, depended upon some pre-existent sympathy between the operators of its divided halves.

If that were so, what was the use of his wonderful discovery, for who could ensure a sympathetic correspondent?
And yet the fact remained that when, in their playmate days, he understood his cousin Mary, and when her quiet, indolent nature had been deeply moved by the shock of the news of her mother's peril, the aerophone had worked.

Whereas now, when she had become a grown-up young lady, he did not understand her any longer--he, whose heart was wrapped up in his experiments, and who by nature feared the adult members of her sex, and shrank from them; when, too, her placid calm was no longer stirred, work it would not.
She laughed at his temper; then grew serious, and said: "Don't get angry, Morris.

After all, there are lots of things that you and I can't understand, and it isn't odd that you should have tumbled across one of them.