The issue remains the same.

An apparatus which before would work only on rare occasions--and then without any certitude--between people in the highest state of sympathy or nervous excitement, has now been brought to such a stage of perfection that by its means anybody can talk to anybody, even if their interests are antagonistic, or their personal enmity bitter.
After the first few experiments with this new material Morris was not slow to discover that although it would need long and careful testing and elaboration, for him it meant, in the main, the realisation of his great dream, and success after years of failure.

And--that was the strange part of it--this realisation and success he owed to no effort of his own, but to some chance suggestion made by Mary.

He told her this, and thanked her as a man thanks one through whom he has found salvation.
In answer she merely laughed, saying that she was nothing but the wire along which a happy inspiration had reached his brain, and that more than this she neither wished, nor hoped, nor was capable of being.
Then suddenly on this happy, tranquil atmosphere which wrapped them about--like the sound of a passing bell at a child's feast--floated the first note of impending doom and death.
The autumn held fine and mild, and Mary, who had been lunching at the Abbey, was playing croquet with Morris upon the side lawn.

This game was the only one for which she chanced to care, perhaps because it did not involve much exertion.