“Why not?” he asked.
“Oh! It seems somehow,” she answered, “as though the whole balance of life would be disturbed. Of course, I know that it is feasible enough. For thousands of years men and women lived upon the earth, and never dreamed that all around them existed a great force which only needed a little humoring, a little understanding, to do the work of all the world. Oh, it is easy to understand that we too carry with us some psychical force corresponding to this! One feels it so often. Premonitions come and go. We can’t tell why, but they are there, and they are true. One feels that sense at work at strange times. Experiments have already shown us that it exists. But I wonder what sort of a place the world will be when once it has yielded itself to law.”
“There has never been a time,” Saton said thoughtfully, “when knowledge has not been for the good of man.”
She shook her head.
“I wonder,” she said, “whether we realize what is for our good. Knowledge, development, culture, may reach their zenith and pass beyond. We may become debauched with the surfeit of these things. The end and aim of life is happiness.”
“The end and aim of life,” he contradicted her, “is knowledge.”
She laughed.
“I am a woman, you see,” she said thoughtfully.
“And am I not a man?” he whispered.
She turned her head and looked at him. The trouble in her eyes deepened. She felt the color coming and going in her cheeks. His eyes seemed to stir things in her against which her whole physical self rebelled. She rose abruptly to her feet.