“You know that is absurd; I cannot do it.”
“Why can’t you do it?”
“Because it is of steel.”
“That is no reason. Why can’t you do it?”
He glared at her fiercely over his glasses, and she saw in his wild eye all the enthusiasm of an instructor enlightening a pupil.
“I’ll tell you why you can’t do it; because every minute particle of it is held together by an enormous force. It may be heated red-hot and beaten into this shape and that, but still the force hangs on as tenaciously as the grip of a giant. Now suppose I had some substance, a drop of which, placed on that piece of iron, would release the force which holds the particles together—what would happen?”
“I don’t know,” replied Jennie.
“Oh, yes you do!” cried the Professor impatiently; “but you are like every other woman—you won’t take the trouble to think. What would happen is this. The force that held the particles together would be released, and the hammer would fall to powder like that gold you showed me. The explosion that followed, caused by the sudden release of the power, would probably wreck this room and extinguish both our lives. You understand that, do you not?”
“Yes, I think I do.”
“Well, here is something you won’t understand, and probably won’t believe when you hear it. There is but one force in this world and but one particle of matter. There is only one element, which is the basis of everything. All the different shapes and conditions of things that we see are caused by a mere variation of that force in conjunction with numbers of that particle. Am I getting beyond your depth?”