him about his own.

She never learned much about his week. He was too busy admiring her hair, which was about the tint of pale nasturtium, with as faint and pure a fragrance. He took delight in the sound of her voice, her dark blue eyes, her grace. She was a constant lesson in refinement, and when he danced with her he knew that this was the right limit of pleasure that he might take in any girl’s sweetness before he was married.

The girls of Eglantine presumed to regard this lively friendship as an engagement. They delighted to swarm about Marvin in the hope of embarrassing him, but they never succeeded. His impartial “darlin’” was ready for them all, and beyond that he presumed no further.

Cynthia was back for the holidays, and once more sang to him. This time it was the Liebestod from “Tristan and Isolde,” and she put all her soul and all her brand-new New York training into it. She did it so well that she seemed to die before his eyes, note by note her breath resigning. He told her he should never forget those marvelous progressions.

After that, in the early months of 1916, Cynthia was no more thought of, and even the delightful companionship with Gratia ceased for a while. He had sought girls as instinctively as a metal seeks the most abundant of the elements, and found them all slightly intoxicating, but none had crumbled him into white sparks.

His love was lead. He was less enchanted by carbon than by her sister, who had sung Moseley to sleep to prevent him from revealing her music to the world. But Marvin, listening in, began to recover that music, thrill on thrill. It seemed to him to advance in close chords like those in which Cynthia had so happily died to him.

To put it less figuratively, he began to suspect that no fewer than ten substances may pass as lead. They are what Soddy had called isotopes, or equals in place. The Moseley number for lead is 82, and Soddy had made it clear that at least one radioactive substance deserves that number, and that at least one inactive lead is lighter than ordinary lead. Marvin now conceived at least three inactive and three active leads, weighing 206, 207, 208, 210, 212, 214. This was maddeningly close to transmuting inactive into active, but he saw no hope of turning the trick. He had to content himself with proving that there really is an inactive lead as light as 206, and after much search and labor he discovered it in a certain Norwegian mineral.

This was getting 

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