Grismer said:
"We're really very limited in the world. We have land and water, sun and moon and stars, two sexes, love and hate to deal with. Everything else is merely a modification of these elemental fixtures.... It becomes tiresome, sometimes."
"Oswald! Don't talk like a silly pessimist," said Stephanie sharply.
He laughed in his easy, attractive way and sat gently swinging one long leg, which was crossed over the other.
He said:
"There is in every living and articulated thing a nerve which, if destroyed, destroys for its possessor a certain area of interest in life. People become pessimists to that extent.
"But, where all the nerves converge to form the vital ganglion, a stroke there means extermination."
"Apropos of what is this dissertation wished upon us?" asked Stephanie with an uneasy smile.
"Did you ever see a paralyzed spider, Stephanie?—alive, breathing, destined to live for weeks, perhaps, and anyway until the wasp's egg under it hatches and becomes a larva to devour it?
"Well, the old wasp required fresh meat for its young, so, with her sting, she annihilated the nerve controlling motion, laid her egg, certain that her progeny would find perfectly fresh food when born. But if she had thrust that sting of hers a little higher—at the juncture of skull and thorax—death would have taken that spider like a stroke of lightning."