"Then I should like to send ever so many men that I know at home where you have been."
"Bravo! But 'ever so many men'?"
"Well, they wear trousers."
"You are cynical."
"No, observant."
"I'm afraid you are a new woman."
"I am. I have just been reborn. Oh, Paul, I have never lived until now. I have never known what life meant. I have lived as one blind, incompetent, thoughtless. Like most of those I knew before you came into my life I had just a vague notion that the earth was round. You know the kind."
"Yes. Take the fiction of civilization away from them and every nine hundred and ninety-nine would perish overnight."
"I saw them in extremity aboard the Cambodia. How many knew one end of a boat from the other? They were all thinking of living, crying to live, and hardly one out of ten knew what to do to save their most precious possession—life."
"There is a big thought behind what you say."