"In science? Bah!"
"Why not? There was Mary Somerville and—and—and Caroline Herschel and—well, I can't think of their names all in a minute, but I'm proud to be one of the girls here anyway."
"You are not one of t'em," he cried angrily. "T'ey are life failures. You fancy t'ey are selected examples, but t'ey are not; t'ey are t'e rejected. T'ey stood in t'e market place and no man vanted t'em; or else t'ey are fools as vell as failures and sent t'e men avay. You know me. I am biologist, not true? I hate t'e vord. I am physiologist, student of t'e nature of life—all kinds of life, t'e ocean of life of v'ich man is but a petty incident."
"You were speaking about—"
"Ach, so! Almost t'ou has t'e scientific mind t'at reasons and remembers. I said, I am physiologist. I study v'at Nature is, v'at she means to do. V'en Nature—Gott, if you vant a shorter name—makes a mistake, Gott says: 'Poor material; spoiled in shaping, wrong in t'e vorks; all failures; t'row t'em avay. Ve haf plenty more to go on vit'. You know. You study Nature, also, a little. You know she is law, she is power. To t'e indifidual pitiless, she mofes vit' blind, discompassionate majesty ofer millions of mangled organisms to t'e greater glory of Pan, of Kosmos, of t'e Universe. She vastes life. And how not? Her best vork lives a little v'ile and produces its kind, and t'e vorst does not, and t'ey go down t'e dark vay toget'er and Nature neit'er veeps nor relents Kosmos is greater t'an t'e indifidual and a million years are short.
"T'ose young vomen—Nature meant t'em to desire beauty and dream of lofe. Vat is lofe? It is Nature's machinery. T'ose vomen are old enough for lofe, but t'ey haf it not. So t'ey die. T'ey do not reproduce t'eir kind, not'ing lifing comes from t'em, to go on lifing, on and on, better and better—or vorse, as Nature planned—vit' efery generation. If a voman haf t'e desire of lofe and of beauty, and lofe and beauty come not to her, t'en I pity her, because I am less vise and resolute to vit'hold pity t'an Nature is. Efen if she haf not lofe, but only t'e ambition of power or learning or vealt', I might pity her vit' equal injustice, but I cannot. She vill not let me. She does not know t'at she is a failure. She prides herself upon being so mis-made. She cannot help t'at; neit'er can I help despising her. Such vomen are abnormal, monstrous, in a vord, failures. Let t'em die! You, I t'ink, are not so. You study to bide t'e time. You haf a fine carriage. You comb t'e hair, you haf pretty ribbons, you make t'e body strong and supple, you look in t'e glass and vish for more beauty. Not so?"
"Of course I do," I cried angrily, wondering for the moment if he had lost his senses. It seemed as if he knew little about women for a man who professed to make all life his study. If there were one of his despised girls who lacked the desire of beauty and the dream of love, I am much mistaken. But I came to see afterward that he understood them as well as myself.
"I t'ought so," he mused, his eyes still upon my face. "And you are not too beautiful now; t'ey could not doubt. Yes; I vatch you, I study you. Seldom I make t'e mistake; but it is fery important. So I vatch you a little v'ile longer yet. T'en I say to myelf: 'Here is t'e voman; yes, she is found.'"
And he chuckled and rubbed his lean hands together as I had so often seen him do.
The thought flashed across my mind that this extraordinary man meditated a proposal of marriage, but I dismissed the notion as ridiculous.