“That’s very kind. Did anything else about the seminarists strike you?”
“I am not acquainted with any of them, and have seen very little of them at all; they are so unpolished, and talk so queerly....”
“They are our real missionaries, and what does it matter if they talk queerly? While we laugh at them they attack the enemy, blindly perhaps, but at any rate with enthusiasm.”
“What enemy?”
“The world; they fight for the new knowledge, the new life. Healthy, virile youth needs air and food, and we need such men.”
“We? Who?”
“The new-born strength of the world.”
“Do you then represent the ‘new-born strength of the world,’” she said, looking at him with observant, curious eyes, but without irony, “or is your name a secret?”
“Would it frighten you if I named it?”
“What could it mean to me if you did disclose it? What is it?”