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.