"Why not?" he replied. "Love is nothing but a scientific fact—after all."
"Then explain it."
He shrugged. "True, you ask me to explain love and I must tell you that I cannot. For the moment it looks as though you had me beaten. But think a moment. I cannot tell you why a stone falls or a Morse signal flashes over a wire. Still, they do. We know there is a law of gravitation, that electricity exists. We see the effects gravity and electricity produce. We study them. We name them—though we do not understand them. You would not say they were not scientific facts just because I cannot explain them."
I nodded, catching his idea.
"So with love," he went on. "We know that there is an attraction—that is a scientific fact, isn't it?—which two people feel for each other. Society may have set up certain external standards. But love knows nothing of them. Our education has taught us to respect them. But above this veneer every now and then crop out impulses, the repulsions and attractions which nature, millions of years back, implanted in human hearts as humanity developed. They have been handed down. Yes, Walter, I know nothing more interesting than to put this thing we call love under the microscope, as it were, and dissect it."
I regarded Craig with amazement. Was he inhuman? Had he suddenly taken leave of his senses?
"You mean it?" I queried. "Really?"
"Certainly."
"Why, Craig," I exclaimed, "some day you, too, will meet your fate—you, the cold, calm, calculating man of science who sits here so detached, analyzing other people's emotions!"
"Perhaps," he nodded, absently.