But a sense of hopelessness came upon her, as she realised how she was handicapped in this discussion. She must either be silent or speak in an unknown tongue. How could she explain to this man the wonder and the beauty of the work that he dismissed in a brutal phrase? How could she talk of that ever-new field for observation, corroboration, and discovery; that unlimited scope for the keen eye, the skilful hand, the thinking brain, the mature judgment? How could she describe those exquisite mechanisms and traceries, those variations of a common type, developing in accordance with fixed law, and yet with a perfectness of adaptation that a priori would have seemed like an impossible fairy tale? How cruelly she would be misunderstood if she talked here of the passionate delight of discovery, of the enthusiasm that had often made her forgetful of time and of all other claims? "To be a true anatomist," she thought with glowing face, "one would need to be a mechanician and a scientist, an artist and a philosopher. He who is not something of all these must be content to learn his work as a trade."
Sir Douglas was looking at her intently. As a medical student she had got beyond his range. As a woman, for the moment, she was beautiful. Such a light is only seen in the eyes of those who can see the ideal in the actual.
But he had not finished his study. He must bring her down to earth again.
"Do you remember your first day in the dissecting-room?"
"Yes," said Mona. She sighed deeply, and the light died out of her eyes.
"A ghastly experience!"
"Yes."
"And yet you say you have not become blunted?"
"I do not think," said Mona, trying hard with a woman's instinct to avoid the least suspicion of dogmatism—"I do not think that one becomes blunted when one ceases to look at the garbage side of a subject. Every subject, I suppose, has its garbage side, if one is on the look-out for it; and in anatomy, unfortunately, that is the side that strikes one first, and consequently the only one outsiders ever see. It is difficult to discuss the question with one who is not a doctor" ("nor a scientist," she added inwardly); "but if you had pursued the study, I think you would see that one must, in time, lose sight of all but the wonder and the beauty of it."
There was a long pause.