gy books and lectures. It
seemed so useless to me--just living, and handing on life, and living no
more."

"That was the idea when I was at the hospital. At a hospital, of
course, bodies do count tremendously. But in my day more than now
because we were in the reactionary stage from blood-letting,
incantations and so on. I remember how Biology came to me with a
sense of crystal precision and inevitability in those days."

He paused. Marcella asked rather doubtfully:

"But do you think that Biology is wrong?"

"Oh, Marcella, your 'rights' and 'wrongs' are so funny, if you only knew
it! You might as well say, 'Is fire wrong?' It's there. There's no
getting away from it. When I was a wee laddie at home I had to write
copy-book lessons on Saturday afternoons to keep me out of mischief. One
I wrote so often that it keeps coming into my mind in the most foolish
way often. 'Fire is a good servant but a bad master.' That was the
sentence. The times I've written it, thick down strokes, thin upstrokes!
Well, that's like any of these ologies--biology especially. It's a good
teacher. You don't have to let it be a taskmaster."

"I'd like to learn ologies, doctor. I'd like to learn to the roots of
things. All the things I know--legends, history, poetry, haven't any
roots at all. Professor Kraill's a biologist, isn't he?"

"Well, yes--rather a heterodox one, but he's getting believed now. But
how on earth did you know?" he said, turning on her in surprise.

"There was an advertisement of a book of his lectures. It was called
'Questing Cells' and father got it. I had to read it to him--with a
dictionary at almost every line, because I didn't understand it. It
showed me that, though I am muddled now, there is such a thing as
clearness in the world. It seemed to me that if I knew all the things
Professor Kraill knows things might be like a crystal ball--all the
things in the world, you know, beautifully clear and rounded off. I read
a lot of books to father after that and got muddled again. But I never
lost the feel of Professor Kraill's book. I couldn't tell you a word of
it now, but it's like the memory of a most beautiful music. I love him.
I'd love to hear him--to see him. He's the wisest man in the world."

"Heaven forbid!" said the doctor, laughing a little.

"Why? Don't you admire him?"

"Immensely, though he's heterodox. But he's just what I was saying
to you just now--an example of a man who isn't the Trinity. Being a