Now at last he understood what those flashes of light from the radium had been and still were, for the bombardment was steadily going on there in the dark corner of the hospital. They were the reflection of helium atoms that had lost two moons and came shooting out of the radium to find them. They would pick up the two missing satellites and again become the quiet inert gas. What bully stuff to put in a balloon, if only there were enough of it!
He wondered just how much electricity lay packed in the nucleus of a radium atom. The nucleus of every atom evidently carried a charge, an excess of positive over negative. He used to go up into the den, from which his father was generally absent, and think about it. He would pick up that old sieve of phosphor bronze and tilt it to an angle of thirty degrees and look at the minerals in the cabinet. If he could only get a spectrum from the positive electricity concealed in the heart of each atom, he could number the elements from hydrogen up. Just now they went by weights, but ought not cobalt to come before nickel, even if it was heavier? Cobalt was more like iron, and ought to come right after iron.
Chapter 3. Lithium
He had chosen Yale in the hope of sometime studying under Boltwood, the chemist who first perceived that the metal radium slowly changes into lead. As a mere freshman he presented himself in Dr. Boltwood’s office, was sharply questioned, was recognized as being something more than a freshman, and received the smiling suggestion that he master differential equations and vector analysis. This he proceeded to do with delight.
Time slipped along, and as a sophomore he took to reading mineralogy. Now iron, copper, silver, gold, lead, and tungsten are to be found in Connecticut, and on days of leisure Marvin took to roaming among their haunts.
Thus it happened that one afternoon in the spring of 1913 he found himself coming over the hill from Lotteryville to Wickford, and looking down on old orchards that seemed like petalite tipped with pink lithium-mica. The nearest one was just below him, and as he passed it on the way down he saw the gable end of an old mansion.
Also through a window he caught a glimpse of chemical apparatus, and somewhere out of doors he heard a girl practicing vocal scales. He guessed that the mansion had been converted into a school for girls. It was not colonial, but looked as if it had been lifted by magic from some British park and set down here in Connecticut.
Descending to the road which passed before the estate, he perceived that its great yard was filled with sweetbrier. Then he heard the singing voice burst into an aria from an opera that he knew by heart.
Differential equations in the head of a youth do not check his springtime impulses, and at the right moment he answered that impassioned caroling in kind. Straightway a maiden appeared at the gate in the high stone wall. She was a vivid creature, and her rare-ripe beauty surpassed anything he could recall.
“Hello, Carmen.”