You have been very gloomy of late, just like you used to be before you married, mooning about and staring at nothing.

And what on earth do you do sitting up to all hours of the morning in that ghosty old chapel, where I wouldn't be alone at twelve o'clock for a hundred pounds ?" "I read," said Morris.
"Read?
Read what?
Novels ?" "Sometimes," answered Morris.
"Oh, how can you tell such fibs?
Why, that last book by Lady What's-her-name which came in the Mudie box--the one they say is so improper--has been lying on your table for over two months, and you can't tell me yet what it was the heroine did wrong.

Morris, you are not inventing anything more, are you ?" Here was an inspiration.

"I admit that I am thinking of a little thing," he said with diffidence, as though he were a budding poet with a sonnet on his mind.
"A little thing?
What little thing ?" "Well, a new kind of aerophone designed to work uninfluenced by its twin." "Well, and why shouldn't it?
Everything can't have a twin--only I suppose there would be nothing to hear." "That's just the point," replied Morris in his old professional manner.
"I think there would be plenty to hear if only I could make the machine sensitive to the sounds and capable of reproducing them." "What sounds ?" asked Mary.
"Well, if, for instance, one could successfully insulate it from the earth noises, the sounds which permeate space, and even those that have their origin upon the surfaces of the planets and perhaps of the more distant stars." "Great heavens!" exclaimed Mary, "imagine a man who can want to let loose upon our poor little world every horrible noise that happens in the stars.

Why, what under heaven would be the use of it ?" "Well, one might communicate with them.