“Well?” said Hitt, turning inquiringly to the doctor.
The latter raised his head. “If these things are true,” he made answer slowly, “then I shall have to recast my entire mentality, my whole basis of thinking.”
“It is just what you must do, Doctor, if you would work out your salvation,” said Carmen. “Jesus said we must repent if we would be saved. Repentance––the Greek metanoia––means a complete and radical change of thought.”
“But––do you mean to say that the whole world has been mistaken? That the entire human race has been deceived for ages?”
“Why,” said Hitt, “it was only in our own day, comparatively speaking, that the human race was undeceived in regard to the world being round. And there are thousands of human beings to-day who still believe in witchcraft, and who worship the sun and moon, and whose lives are wholly under the spell of superstition. Human character, a great scientist tells us, has not changed since history began.”
“But we can’t revamp our thought-processes!”
“Then we must go on missing the mark, sinning, suffering, sorrowing, and dying, over and over and over again, until we decide that we can do so,” said Hitt.
The doctor looked at Carmen and met that same smile of unbounded love which she gave without stint to a sin-weary world.
“I––I’ll come again,” he said. “When? To-morrow night?”
“Yes,” said Carmen, rising and coming around to him. “And,” in a whisper, “bring Pat.”