“Boyne reads about insects,” she admitted.
“He told me of his collection of cocoons. He seems to be afraid it has suffered in his absence.”
“I’m afraid it has,” said Ellen, and then remained silent.
“There!” the young man broke out, pointing seaward. “That’s rather a fine one. Doesn’t that realize your idea of something mountains high? Unless your mountains are very high in Ohio!”
“It is grand. And the gulf between! But we haven’t any in our part. It’s all level. Do you believe the tenth wave is larger than the rest?”
“Why, the difficulty is to know which the tenth wave is, or when to begin counting.”
“Yes,” said the girl, and she added, vaguely: “I suppose it’s like everything else in that. We have to make-believe before we can believe anything.”
“Something like an hypothesis certainly seems necessary,” Breckon assented, with a smile for the gravity of their discourse. “We shouldn’t have the atomic theory without it.” She did not say anything, and he decided that the atomic theory was beyond the range of her reading. He tried to be more concrete. “We have to make-believe in ourselves before we can believe, don’t we? And then we sometimes find we are wrong!” He laughed, but she asked, with tragical seriousness:
“And what ought you to do when you find out you are mistaken in yourself?”
“That’s what I’m trying to decide,” he replied. “Sometimes I feel like renouncing myself altogether; but usually I give myself another chance. I dare say if I hadn’t been so forbearing I might have agreed with your sister about my unfitness for the ministry.”