life work--and that of every
scientific amateur who has preceded me since the world began--into half
a dozen sentences. As that would be difficult, I must ask you to accept
my personal assurance that you witnessed a fact, not a fiction of my
imagination."

"And your instrument is so perfect that it not only renders molecules
and atoms but their diffusion visible? It is a microscopic
impossibility. At least it is amazing."

"Pshaw!" Brande exclaimed impatiently. "My instrument does certainly
magnify to a marvellous extent, but not by the old device of the simple
microscope, which merely focussed a large area of light rays into a
small one. So crude a process could never show an atom to the human eye.
I add much to that. I restore to the rays themselves the luminosity
which they lost in their passage through our atmosphere. I give them
back all their visual properties, and turn them with their full etheric
blaze on the object under examination. Great as that achievement is, I
deny that it is amazing. It may amaze a Papuan to see his eyelash
magnified to the size of a wire, or an uneducated Englishman to see a
cheese-mite magnified to the size of a midge. It should not amaze you
to see a simple process a little further developed."

"Where does the danger you spoke of come in?" I asked with a pretence of
interest. Candidly, I did not believe a single word that Brande had
said.

"If you will consult a common text-book on the physics of the ether," he
replied, "you will find that one grain of matter contains sufficient
energy, if etherised, to raise a hundred thousand tons nearly two miles.
In face of such potentiality it is not wise to wreck incautiously even
the atoms of a molecule."

"And the limits to this description of scientific experiment? Where are
they?"

"There are no limits," Brande said decisively. "No man can say to
science 'thus far and no farther.' No man ever has been able to do so.
No man ever shall!"

CHAPTER III.

"IT IS GOOD TO BE ALIVE."

Amongst the letters lying on my breakfast-table a few days after the
meeting was one addressed in an unfamiliar hand. The writing was bold,
and formed like a man's. There was a faint trace of a perfume about the
envelope which I remembered. I opened it first.

It was, as I expected, from Miss Brande. Her brother had gone to their
country place on the southern coast. She and her friend, Edith Metford,
were going that day. Their luggage was already