I
In my third term at Newnham I was already Professor Blair’s favourite
pupil. Later, he wasted a great deal of time praising my slight figure
and my piquant face, with its big round grey eyes and their long black
lashes; but the first attraction was my singular gift. Few men, and, I
believe, no other women, could approach me in one of the most priceless
qualifications for scientific study, the faculty of apprehending
minute differences. My memory was poor, extraordinarily so; I had
the utmost trouble to enter Cambridge at all. But I could adjust a
micrometer better than either students or professor, and read a vernier
with an accuracy to which none of them could even aspire. To this I
added a faculty of subconscious calculation which was really uncanny.
If I were engaged in keeping a solution between (say) 70° and 80° I had
no need to watch the thermometer. Automatically I became aware that the
mercury was close to the limit, and would go over from my other work
and adjust the Bunsen without a thought.
More remarkable still, if any object were placed on my bench without
my knowledge and then removed, I could, if asked within a few minutes,
describe the object roughly, especially distinguishing the shape of
its base and the degree of its opacity to heat and light. From these
data I could make a pretty good guess at what the object was.
This faculty of mine was repeatedly tested, and always with success.
Extreme sensitiveness to minute degrees of heat was its obvious cause.
I was also a singularly good thought-reader, even at this time. The
other girls feared me absolutely. They need not have done so; I had
neither ambition nor energy to make use of any of my powers. Even now,
when I bring to mankind this message of a doom so appalling that at the
age of twenty-four I am a shrivelled, blasted, withered wreck, I am
supremely weary, supremely indifferent.
I have the heart of a child and the consciousness of Satan, the
lethargy of I know not what disease; and yet, thank--oh! there can be
no God!--the resolution to warn mankind to follow my example, and then
to explode a dynamite cartridge in my mouth.