He had never imagined that anyone could be so graceful. Her lithe and flexible figure was seen to its best advantage in this game requiring great agility.
Ralph, under this bombardment of charms, was spellbound. He played mechanically, and, it must be admitted, wretchedly. And he was so thoroughly and abjectly in love that he did not care. To him, but one thing mattered. He knew that unless he could have Alice life itself would not matter to him.
He felt that he would gladly have lost a hundred games when she at last flung down her racket, crying happily: "Oh, I won, I won, didn't I?"
"You certainly did," he cried. "You were wonderful!"
"I'm a little bit afraid you let me win," she pouted. "It really wasn't fair of you."
"You were fine," he declared. "I was hopelessly outclassed from the beginning. You have no idea how beautiful you were," he went on, impulsively. "More beautiful than I ever dreamed anyone could be."
Before his ardent eyes she drew back a little, half pleased, half frightened, and not a little confused.
Sensing her embarrassment he instantly became matter-of-fact.
"Now," he said, "I am going to show you the source of New York's light and power."
A few minutes later, after both had changed their shoes, they were again seated in an aerocab and a twenty minute journey brought them well into the center of what was formerly New York state.
They alighted on an immense plain on which twelve monstrous Meteoro-Towers, each 1,500 feet high, were stationed. These towers formed a hexagon inside of which were the immense _Helio-Dynamophores_, or Sun-power-generators.
The entire expanse, twenty kilometers square, was covered with glass. Underneath the heavy plate glass squares were the photo-electric elements which transformed the solar heat _direct_ into electric energy.
The photo-electric elements, of which there were 400 to each square meter, were placed in large movable metal cases, each case containing 1,600 photo-electric units.
Each metal case in turn was movable, and mounted on a kind of large tripod in such a manner that each case from sunrise to sunset presented its glass plate directly to the sun. The rays of the sun, consequently, struck the photo-electric elements always vertically, never obliquely. A small electric motor inside of the tripod moved the metal case so as to keep the plates always facing the sun.