Her well-formed hands were rough. I noticed a characteristic, nervous little habit of rubbing the tips of her fingers over the pad of her thumb in quick succession. I learned later that working with radium had made them numb. Her kind, patient, beautiful face had the detached expression of a scholar. Suddenly I felt like an intruder. I was struck dumb. My timidity exceeded her own. I had been a trained interrogator for twenty years, but I could not ask a single question of this gentle woman in a black cotton dress. I tried to explain that American women were interested in her great work, and found myself apologizing for intruding upon her precious time. To put me at my ease, Madame Curie began to talk about America. She had for many years wanted to visit my country, but she could not be separated from her children. "America," she said, "has about fifty grammes of radium. Four of these are in Baltimore, six in Denver, seven in New York." She went on naming the location of every grain. "And in France?" I asked. "My laboratory," she replied simply, "has hardly more than a gramme." "_You_ have only a gramme?" I exclaimed. That meant less than one-twenty-ninth of an ounce. "I? Oh, I have none," she corrected. "It belongs to my laboratory." I suggested royalties on her patents. Surely she had protected her right to the processes by which radium is produced. The revenue from such patents should have made her a very rich woman. Quietly, and without any seeming consciousness of the tremendous renunciation, she said, "There were no patents. We were working in the interests of science. Radium was not to enrich any one. Radium is an element. It belongs to all people." She had contributed to the progress of science and the relief of human suffering, and yet, in the prime of her life she was without the tools which would enable her to make further contribution of her genius. "If you had the whole world to choose from," I asked impulsively, "what would you take?" It was a silly question, perhaps, but as it happened, a fateful one. "You ought to have everything in the world you need to go on with your work," I said. "Some one must undertake this." "Who will?" she asked rather hopelessly. "The women of America," I promised--and then I rose to go. That week I learned that the market price of a gramme of radium was one hundred thousand dollars. I also learned that Madame Curie's laboratory, although practically a new building, was without sufficient equipment; that the radium held there was used at that time only for extracting emanations for hospital use in cancer treatment. I saw Madame Curie at the Institute again and then in her own home--a small apartment in the Ile St. Louis, where she lived with her two daughters. It was a happy, busy little family. They had no protest against life except to regret that lack of equipment interfered with the important research work Madame Curie and her daughter, Irene, should have been doing.