"Why not? It is good to know everything."
"Well, Hedvig, your theologian meant to say that a god was not capable of this."
"What is that?"
"Give me your hand."
"I can feel it, and have thought it would be something like that; without this provision of nature man would not be able to fecundate his mate. And how could the foolish theologian maintain that this was an imperfection?"
"Because it is the result of desire, Hedvig, and it would not have taken place in me if I had not been charmed with you, and if I had not conceived the most seducing ideas of the beauties that I cannot see from the view of the beauties I can see. Tell me frankly whether feeling that did not give you an agreeable sensation."
"It did, and just in the place where your hand is now. Don't you feel a pleasant tickling there, Helen, after what the gentleman has been saying to us?"
"Yes, I feel it, but I often do, without anything to excite me."
"And then," said I, "nature makes you appease it . . . thus?"
"Not at all."