“Not a bit!” he replied cordially. “You’re as welcome as the April sun.”
She seized his hand and pressed it. “Now tell me,” she said eagerly, looking about. “What are you doing? What’s that thing?”
“That,” said he, taking up the pulpy gray object, “is the brain of my erstwhile friend and collaborator, Doctor Bolton. He willed it to the University.”
“Alas, poor Yorick!” murmured Carmen, a facetious twinkle coming into her eyes as she looked at it. “And why are you cutting it up?”
“In the interests of science,” returned the man, studying her. “That we may increase our knowledge of this marvelous mechanism of thought, and the laws by which it operates in mental processes.”
“Then you still blindly seek the living among the dead, don’t you?” she murmured. “You think that this poor thing held life, and you search now among its ashes for the living principle. But, God is life; and ‘Canst thou by searching find out God?’”
The man regarded her intently without replying. She bent for a while over the half-dissected brain in deep thought. Then she looked up.
“Doctor,” she said, “life is not structural. God is life; and to know Him is to reflect life. Reflecting Him, we are immortal. Doctor, don’t you think it is about time to do away with this business of dying?”
The man of science started visibly, and his eyes opened wider. The abrupt question quite swept him off his feet.