The mournful question deeply moved Sir Bernard. He was asking this young man to surrender the sweetest form of earthly happiness; what could he offer him in exchange?
“Has science nothing else to say to me? You are a physician; if I am diseased, cannot you cure me?”
Vanbrugh was disconcerted.
“We are only groping our way as yet,” he answered mildly. “Remember that all knowledge was forbidden by the priesthood for a thousand years. We are only in the beginning of a better age.”
“The age in which there will be no men like me!” Alistair commented. “And in the meantime science has no gospel for me.”
“It is your father whom you have to blame,” Sir Bernard said reluctantly.
Alistair trembled.
“You mean that I ought not to have been born?”
The physician was silent.
“I am a waste product, for which science has no use. O, why not? You have found beautiful dyes in coal-tar; can you find nothing in me?”