"How can you talk of such things?
I can't take my mind--" "I know you can't," she interrupted.

"You are all the time thinking of that everlasting old hole in the ground.

Well, I am tired of it; do let us talk of something else." Margaret Raleigh was much more than tired of that phenomenal hole in the earth which had been made by the automatic shell; she was frightened by it.

It was something terrible to her; she had scarcely slept that night, and she needed breakfast and change of thought as much as Roland.
But it was not long before she found that it was impossible to turn his thoughts from that all-absorbing subject.

All she could do was to endeavor to guide them into quiet channels.
"What are you going to do this morning ?" she asked, towards the close of the breakfast.
"I am going to try to take the temperature of that shaft at various points," said he.
"That will be an excellent thing," she answered; "you may make valuable discoveries; but I should think the heat at that great depth would be enough to melt your thermometers." "It did not melt my lead or my sounding-wire," said he.