As he paced the deck on the return voyage, Marvin came again to the conclusion that he had been refused because Jean was unwilling to leave her father. She was unwilling even to discuss the matter, lest she give way. Dr. Rich was too old and too deeply attached to his northern retreat to be transplanted to a city.

Well, nothing could please Jean’s lover more than to settle down there with her in the woods, provided he could find something to do to make a living. Were he in better favor with Asher Ferry, he might perhaps hope to be employed in connection with that vast tract of Michigan land. Asher would certainly need chemists in his new northern domain, and a car might make it possible for one of them to live at some distance from the tract.

But Asher was out of the question. What then? Might not a chemist put up a diminutive laboratory and manufacture something at Upper Encampment? Chemists had been reduced ere this to making tooth-paste or pills. Marvin grimly fancied himself naming a tooth-paste for Ojeeg or the Red Leaf.

Of course there was one other wild suggestion, the suggestion of Lord Fortinbras that Chase Mahan might take his two millions of profit, when he got it, and endow a research laboratory. The notion would never have entered the old baron’s head but for a guilty conscience. Without lifting a hand he had made a million pounds from the sale of virgin American pine. But Chase Mahan would not be warranted in entrusting a research laboratory to a son who was but a tyro in physics.

He had come away from England without making any effort to visit Oxford or Cambridge or Manchester. He leaned over the rail and saw those bits of Eden looking up at him from within the dark crystal. There was the Cavendish laboratory at Cambridge, with Sir Joseph Thomson running his fingers through his ambrosial locks as he evoked hypothesis after hypothesis to be tested by his pupils. Sir Joseph had been the Mecca of the world’s physicists for many a year.

And there at Manchester was Thomson’s most famous pupil. Sir Ernest Rutherford, the man under whom Boltwood and Bohr and Moseley had studied. What was Sir Ernest doing now? Was he continuing Moseley’s work, or was he trying to prove that every atom is built up out of lighter atoms?

Many able chemists denied that it would ever be possible to change one element into another and so release the incredible heat. Though admitting that Rutherford was right in regarding every nucleus as made of positive electricity, they declared that no human skill could pierce that nucleus. But it would be like Rutherford to try. If he did so, it would be by bombarding light substances with radium, in the hope that some helium atom might hit a nucleus and split it.

But these speculations all faded back into the wave as the steamer approached New York.

On landing he called up the laboratory to make sure that Grein was taking the much-needed vacation. He was informed that Dr. Grein was in town and at his work as usual. So uptown went Marvin and burst in upon his friend.

Grein was seated at a desk, figuring. He glanced up.

“Well?”

“I’m glad to see you looking better.”

“But what do you say?”

“About what?”

“Didn’t you get my letter?”

“No. I’ve been in England.”

“Did he show you?”

“Did who show me what?”

Grein scowled, scribbled an equation, and pushed it across.

Marvin looked at it and remarked, “I’d call that a helium nucleus pushing a hydrogen atom ahead of it about forty thousand times faster than the bullet that killed Moseley.”

“Don’t you know what Rutherford has done since we last met?”

“No.”

“He has disintegrated the nitrogen atom. He has knocked hydrogen atoms out of the nitrogen nucleus.”

Marvin said nothing—merely clapped his hand to his stomach as if a thunderbolt had hit him there.

“I see it gets you,” smiled Grein. “Better get back into the game.”

“Are you offering me a job?”

“The president thinks I’m offering you the earth. But it’s only an assistant professorship.”

“Grein, you’re an angel of mercy. But I can’t give you an answer till I know whether I’m to be married.”

“Haven’t you got that matter fixed up yet?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well, in God’s name get it settled, and bring her down here and get to work. We have just given Langmuir the Nichols medal for reactions at low pressures, but his criticisms of Rutherford and Bohr drive me to drink. They fascinate me, and I can’t disprove them, but his atom is too simple.”

Marvin sat immobile, still thinking of the marvel accomplished by Rutherford, and Grein went on.

“The stuff you sent me from France may contain the solution, especially what you have to say about interpenetrating elliptical orbits. But think of the years of experimentation before us.”

“I’m anxious enough to work under you, Grein.”

“Marvin, I’d be equally glad to work under you. Sometimes in a moment of madness I dream of a quiet laboratory—no students except a few picked men—no limit to cost of apparatus—no newspaper reporters—”

“Fairy tales don’t come true.”

“That’s correct, but I shall be happy enough if you join me within a month.”