"Your father was an old man, Catherine. You know as well as I do—better, perhaps—the whole trend of his life's thought and ambition. Even if he'd lived, he couldn't have changed, now, at his age. It would have been an utter impossibility. Why say more?"
Catherine made no reply; but in her very attitude of trust and confidence, Gabriel knew he read the comfort he had given her.
Silence, a while. At last she spoke.
"Visions!" she whispered. "Wonderful visions of the glad, new time! How do you see them, Gabriel?"
"How do I see them?" His face seemed to glow with inspiration under the shining light in the far heavens. "I see them as the realization of a time, now really close at hand, when this old world of ours shall be, as it never yet has been, in truth civilized, emancipated, free. When the night of ignorance, kingcraft, priestcraft, servility and prejudice, bigotry and superstition shall be forever swept away by the dawn of intelligence and universal education, by scientific truth and light—by understanding and by fearlessness.
"When Science shall no longer be 'the mystery of a class,' but shall become the heritage of all mankind. When, because much is known by all, nothing shall be dreaded by any. When all mankind shall be absolutely its own master, strong, and brave, and free!"
"Like you, Gabriel!" the girl exclaimed, from her heart.
"Don't say that!" he disclaimed. "Don't—"
She put her hand over his mouth.
"Shhhh!" she forbade him. "You mustn't argue, now, because your arm's just been set and we don't want any fever. If my dreams include you, too, Gabriel, don't try to tell me I'm mistaken—because I'm not, to begin with, and I know I'm not!"