shook helplessly from side to side.

"What is it you've found?" said Isabel.

He looked at her searchingly and hesitated.

"If I tell you you'll keep it secret?"

"Yes."

"Honest?"

"Honest."

He dropped his voice.

"It's radium," he said.

She repeated the word dully.

"Radium as it never had been found before. A--whew! an inexhaustible
supply. Look--look here!"

He drew from his pocket a small black cylinder with a glass peephole at
the top, protected by a circular cap of a dark substance.

"It's the finest piece of radium ever found," he said, "and where I got
it, at a single dip of the shovel--but never mind that. See, protect it
with your hand so, and look through that eyehole."

At the bottom of the cylinder was a luminous speck like a fire seen from
a long way off. Waves and jags of angry light burst from it ceaselessly,
this way and that. The restless mass was alive, active, burning.
Infinitesimal though its dimensions were it gave a sense of illimitable
force and power, a prodigious energy.

Isabel returned the cylinder with a nervous shudder.

"I don't like it," she said. "It--it's horrid somehow--wicked looking."
She shot a quick glance at him. "You say this is going to be of value to
the world!"

He nodded.

"Then why are you in danger? Why aren't you protected as someone who--
Why are you in danger?"

He didn't answer at once and again she repeated the question.

"It's this way, dear," he said. "When anything great enough is
discovered there is bound to be competition. I found the stuff but I
haven't the capital to exploit it. I took my samples to a ring of
financiers who are backing me."

"Mr. Torrington? Mr. Cassis?"

"Cranbourne--Frayne--that crowd. By sheer bad luck another ring got news
of what was going on and are moving heaven and earth to get a share in
the plunder."

"So it's plunder now," she said.

"From their point of view."

"And from yours?"

"Achievement--a game."

"That you're willing to risk your life for."

"One doesn't think of that," he answered.

"I do," she said.

"Wish I could give you some of my enthusiasm. What is it old Kipling
says again:

'The game is more than the Player of the Game
'And the ship is more than the crew.'"

"Old Kipling, as you call him, wrote for men. What did he know about
_me_?"

"Enough to guess you wouldn't have much use for us if we shirked standing
our chances."

"The chances being?"