Doris's face flushed.
"Not vivisection!" she exclaimed.
"Yes, vivisection. It may be that our modern science has gone off on an entirely wrong tack; it may be, as a young doctor said to me at Borrowness the other day, that we cannot logically stop short now of vivisecting human beings; but, as things are at present, I do not see how any man can conscientiously take an important lectureship on physiology, unless he does original work. I don't mean to say that he must be at that part of it all the time. Far from it. He may make chemical physiology or histology his specialty. But you see physiology is such a floating, growing, mobile science. It exists in no text-book. Photograph it one day, and the picture is unrecognisable the next. What the physiologist has to do is to plunge his mind like a thermometer, into the world of physiological investigation, and register one thing one moment, and another thing the next. He need never carry on experiments on living animals before his students, but he must live in the midst of the growing science—or be a humbug. I thought once that I should like nothing better than to be a lecturer on physiology, but I see now that it is impossible," she shivered,—"although, you know, dear, vivisection, as it exists in the popular mind, is a figment of the imaginations of the anti-vivisectionists."
Doris did not reply. She could not bear to think that Mona did not judge wisely and truly; she tried to agree with her in most things; but this was a hard saying.
"What does the young doctor at Borrowness say to a woman doctor?" she asked suddenly.
Mona winced. "He does not know that I am a medical student. Why should he?"
"Oh, Mona, you don't mean to say you have not told him! What an opportunity lost!"
"It is not my custom to go about ticketed, dear; but, if you wish, you shall tie a label round my neck."
"However, you will see him again. There is no hurry."
"It is to be hoped not," said Mona a little bitterly; "and now, dear, I must go."