can't tell
you how sorry I am you saw it. I don't wonder you're shaken, poor
little girl, and it's natural that the shock should have made you
unreasonable and uncharitable--unlike yourself, in fact, for I never
knew a more reasonable woman when you are in your right mind, or a
more charitable. I'm not so bad, however, as you think me. I never
intended to inflict suffering on the creature. I didn't know he'd
recover. I had given him a dose of curare."

"The drug that paralyses without deadening the sense of pain," Beth
interposed. "I have heard of the tender mercies of the vivisector. He
saves himself as much as he can in the matter of distracting noises."

Dan had mentioned curare to give a persuasive touch of scientific
accuracy to his explanation, not suspecting that she knew the
properties of the drug, and he was taken aback for a moment; but he
craftily abandoned that point and took up another.

"These experiments must be made, in the interests of suffering
humanity, more's the pity," he said, sighing.

"In the interests of cruel and ambitious scientific men, struggling to
outstrip each other, and make money, and win fame for themselves
regardless of the cost. They were ready enough in old days to vivisect
human beings when it was allowed, and they would do it again if they
dared."

"Now look here, Beth; don't be rabid," said Dan temperately. "Just
think of the sufferings medical men are able to relieve nowadays in
consequence of these researches."

"Good authorities say that nothing useful has been discovered by
vivisection that could not have been discovered without it," Beth
rejoined. "And even if it had been the means of saving human life,
that would not justify your employment of it. There never could be a
human life worth saving at such an expense of suffering to other
creatures. It isn't as if you made an experiment and had done with it
either. One generation after another of you repeats the same
experiments to verify them, to see for yourselves, for practice; and
so countless helpless creatures are being tortured continually by
numbers of men who are degraded and brutalised themselves by their
experiments. Had I known you were a vivisector, I should not only have
refused to marry you, I should have declined to associate with you. To
conceal such a thing from the woman you were about to marry was a
cruel injustice--a fraud."

"I concealed nothing from you that you were old enough to understand
and