This machine, which you so recklessly threatened to throw out of the window, accidentally slipped from its support when I was working here some time after midnight on the seventeenth.

I placed it immediately as you see it now, where it throws its rays into mid-air, and is consequently harmless; but I knew an explosion must have taken place in Vienna somewhere within the radius of half a mile.

I drew the pencilled semi-circle that you saw on the map of Vienna, for in my excitement in placing the machine upright I had not noticed exactly where it had pointed, but I knew that, along the line I had drawn, an explosion must have occurred, and could only hope that it had not been a serious one, which it seems it was.

I waited and waited, hardly daring to leave my attic, but hearing no news of any disaster, I was torn between the anxiety that would naturally come to any humane man in my position who did not wish to destroy life, and the fear that, if nothing had occurred, I had not actually made the discovery I thought I had made.
You spoke of my actions being childish; but when I realized that I had myself been the cause of the explosion, a fear of criminal prosecution came over me.

Not that I should object to imprisonment if they would allow me to continue my experiments; but that, doubtless, they would not do, for the authorities know nothing of science, and care less." In spite of her initial scepticism, Jennie found herself gradually coming to believe in the efficiency of the harmless-looking mechanism of glass and iron which she saw on the table before her, and a sensation of horror held her spellbound as she gazed at it.