I think we were all a little startled, and Hermione looked at Paul and turned pale. As for Cutter, he very slowly and solemnly drew a cigar from his case, lit it carefully, crossed one knee over the other, and gazed fixedly at Madame Patoff during several minutes, before he spoke.
"Would you really like to see anybody drowned?" he asked at last.
"Why do you ask?" inquired Madame Patoff, rather sharply.
"Because I thought you said so, and I wanted to know if you were in earnest."
"I suppose we should all like to see our enemies die," said the old lady. "Not painfully, of course, but so that we should be quite sure of it." She laid a strong emphasis on the last words, and as she looked up I thought she glanced at Paul.
"If you had seen many people die, you would not care for the sight," said the professor quietly. "Besides, you have no enemies."
"What is death?" asked Madame Patoff, looking at him with a curiously calm smile as she asked the question.
"The only thing we know about it, is that it appears to be in every way the opposite of life," was the scientist's answer. "Life separates us for a time from the state of what we call inanimate matter. When life ceases, we return to that state."
"Why do you say 'what we call inanimate matter'?" inquired Paul.
"Because it has been very well said that names are labels, not definitions. As a definition, inanimate matter means generally the earth, the water, the air; but the name would be a very poor definition,—as poor as the word 'man' used to define the human animal."