We nodded. Even in our own humble life after our day's work we had found this true.

"Now," said the Professor, planting himself squarely in front of us, "a.s.suming a spherical form, and a spatial content, a.s.suming the dynamic forces that are familiar to us and a.s.suming--the thing is bold, I admit--"

We looked as bold as we could.

"--a.s.suming that the IONS, or NUCLEI of the atom--I know no better word--"

"Neither do we," we said.

"--that the nuclei move under the energy of such forces what have we got?"

"Ha!" we said.

"What have we got? Why, the simplest matter conceivable. The forces inside our atom--itself, mind you, the function of a circle--mark that--"

We did.

"--becomes merely a function of pi!"

The Great Scientist paused with a laugh of triumph.

"A function of pi!" we repeated with delight.

"Precisely. Our conception of ultimate matter is reduced to that of an oblate spheroid described by the revolution of an ellipse on its own minor axis!"

"Good heavens!" we said, "merely that."

"Nothing else. And in that case any further calculation becomes a mere matter of the extraction of a root."

"How simple," we murmured.

"Is it not?" said the Professor. "In fact, I am accustomed, in talking to my cla.s.s, to give them a very clear idea, by simply taking as our root F,--F being any finite constant--"

He looked at us sharply. We nodded.

"And raising F to the log of infinity;--I find they apprehend it very readily."

"Do they?" we murmured. Ourselves we felt as if the Log of Infinity carried us to ground higher than what we commonly care to tread on.

"Of course," said the Professor, "the Log of Infinity is an Unknown."

"Of course," we said, very gravely. We felt ourselves here in the presence of something that demanded our reverence.

"But still," continued the Professor, almost jauntily, "we can handle the Unknown just as easily as anything else."

This puzzled us. We kept silent. We thought it wiser to move on to more general ground. In any case, our notes were now nearly complete.

"These discoveries, then," we said, "are absolutely revolutionary."

"They are," said the Professor.

"You have now, as we understand, got the atom--how shall we put it?--got it where you want it."

"Not exactly," said the Professor with a sad smile.

"What do you mean?" we asked.

"Unfortunately our a.n.a.lysis, perfect though it is, stops short.

We have no synthesis."

The Professor spoke as in deep sorrow.

"No synthesis," we moaned. We felt it was a cruel blow. But in any case our notes were now elaborate enough. We felt that our readers could do without synthesis. We rose to go.

"Synthetic dynamics," said the Professor, taking us by the coat, "is only beginning--"

"In that case--" we murmured, disengaging his hand--

"But wait, wait," he pleaded, "wait for another fifty years--"

"We will," we said, very earnestly, "but meantime as our paper goes to press this afternoon we must go now. In fifty years we will come back."

"Oh, I see, I see," said the Professor, "you are writing all this for a newspaper. I see."

"Yes," we said, "we mentioned that at the beginning."

"Ah!" said the Professor, "did you? Very possibly. Yes."

"We Propose," we said, "to feature the article for next Sat.u.r.day."

"Will it be long?" he asked.

"About two columns," we answered.

"And how much," said the Professor in a hesitating way, "do I have to pay you to put it in?"

"How much which?" we asked.

"How much do I have to pay?"

"Why, Professor," we begin quickly. Then we checked ourselves.

After all was it right to undeceive him, this quiet, absorbed man of science with his ideals, his atoms and his emanations? No, a hundred times no. Let him pay a hundred times.

"It will cost you," we said very firmly, "ten dollars."

The Professor began groping among his apparatus. We knew that he was looking for his purse.

"We should like also very much," we said, "to insert your picture along with the article--"