ext instant Professor van Huysman was on his
legs, note-book in one hand and stylo in the other. All the fresh colour
had gone out of his face; his eyes were burning, and his lips were
twitching with uncontrollable excitement.

"My Lord," he began, in a voice that even Brenda hardly recognised,
"like yourself, I have been unable to find any actual error in the
lecturer's demonstrations of which I will take permission to call the
possibility of the impossible; in other words, that a contradiction in
terms can be true and false at one and the same time. That, my Lord, and
ladies, and gentlemen," he went on, raising his voice almost to a
shout, "is still, and, I hope, in the interests of true science, and not
adroit jugglery with figures and formulae, will ever remain, another
impossibility. Professor Marmion has apparently trisected the triangle,
squared the circle, and doubled the cube. It may be that he has
persuaded some present that he really has done so; but, again, in the
interests of science, I desire to protest against the way in which these
demonstrations have been sprung upon us. Calculations which he has
doubtless taken months to elaborate, he has asked us to test in a few
minutes. For myself, I decline to accept them as true, and I hope that
others will do the same until we have had time to satisfy ourselves that
the hitherto impossible has been made possible."

He sat down, breathing hard and white with anger and excitement, and
then the trouble began. The trisectors, the circle-squarers, and the
cube-doublers, had seen their long-flouted theories proved to
demonstration by one of the most learned and responsible men of science
in the world, and one of their most sarcastic and hitherto successful
flouters had been compelled to confess that he could find no flaw in the
calculations of this mathematical Daniel so unexpectedly come to
judgment. They did not understand his proofs, but that was no reason why
they should reject them, and so they rose as one man in support of their
champion to demand that Professor van Huysman should withdraw his
imputations of jugglery. He sat still, and shook his head. He was too
disgusted and bewildered to do or say anything more until he had made a
searching analysis of these diabolical formulae.

But there were others who wanted to have their say in defence of
scientific orthodoxy, and they had it--and the rest was a chaos of
intellectual conflict until, at the end of nearly