hat's it," we said. "Give it to us that way."

"It amounts, if one may boil it down into a phrase--"

"Boil it, boil it," we interrupted.

"Amounts, if one takes the mere gist of it--"

"Take it," we said, "take it."

"Amounts to the resolution of the ultimate atom."

"Ha!" we exclaimed.

"I must ask you first to clear your mind," the Professor continued, "of
all conception of ponderable magnitude."

We nodded. We had already cleared our mind of this.

"In fact," added the Professor, with what we thought a quiet note of
warning in his voice, "I need hardly tell you that what we are dealing
with must be regarded as altogether ultramicroscopic."

We hastened to assure the Professor that, in accordance with the high
standards of honour represented by our journal, we should of course
regard anything that he might say as ultramicroscopic and treat it
accordingly.

"You say, then," we continued, "that the essence of the problem is the
resolution of the atom. Do you think you can give us any idea of what
the atom is?"

The Professor looked at us searchingly.

We looked back at him, openly and frankly. The moment was critical for
our interview. Could he do it? Were we the kind of person that he could
give it to? Could we get it if he did?

"I think I can," he said. "Let us begin with the assumption that the
atom is an infinitesimal magnitude. Very good. Let us grant, then,
that though it is imponderable and indivisible it must have a spacial
content? You grant me this?"

"We do," we said, "we do more than this, we _give_ it to you."

"Very well. If spacial, it must have dimension: if dimension--form. Let
us assume _ex hypothesi_ the form to be that of a spheroid and see where
it leads us."

The Professor was now intensely interested. He walked to and fro in his
laboratory. His features worked with excitement. We worked ours, too, as
sympathetically as we could.

"There is no other possible method in inductive science," he added,
"than to embrace some hypothesis, the most attractive that one can find,
and remain with it--"

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,
"assuming a spherical form, and a spacial content, assuming the dynamic
forces that are familiar to us and assuming--the thing is bold, I
admit--"

We looked as bold as we could.

"Assuming that the _ions_, or _nuclei_ of the at