a poison, were
consuming me. My God! What is going to become of me?"

"My poor child! It is terrible that you should torture yourself in
this way! And yet I had been quite tranquil about you, for you have
a well-balanced mind--you have a good, little, round, clear, solid
headpiece, as I have often told you. You will soon calm down. But what
confusion in the brains of others, at the end of the century, if you,
who are so sane, are troubled! Have you not faith, then?"

She answered only by a heavy sigh.

"Assuredly, viewed from the standpoint of happiness, faith is a strong
staff for the traveler to lean upon, and the march becomes easy and
tranquil when one is fortunate enough to possess it."

"Oh, I no longer know whether I believe or not!" she cried. "There are
days when I believe, and there are other days when I side with you and
with your books. It is you who have disturbed me; it is through you I
suffer. And perhaps all my suffering springs from this, from my revolt
against you whom I love. No, no! tell me nothing; do not tell me that I
shall soon calm down. At this moment that would only irritate me still
more. I know well that you deny the supernatural. The mysterious for you
is only the inexplicable. Even you concede that we shall never know all;
and therefore you consider that the only interest life can have is the
continual conquest over the unknown, the eternal effort to know more.
Ah, I know too much already to believe. You have already succeeded but
too well in shaking my faith, and there are times when it seems to me
that this will kill me."

He took her hand that lay on the still warm grass, and pressed it hard.

"No, no; it is life that frightens you, little girl. And how right you
are in saying that happiness consists in continual effort. For from this
time forward tranquil ignorance is impossible. There is no halt to be
looked for, no tranquillity in renunciation and wilful blindness.
We must go on, go on in any case with life, which goes on always.
Everything that is proposed, a return to the past, to dead religions,
patched up religions arranged to suit new wants, is a snare. Learn to
know life, then; to love it, live it as it ought to be lived--that is
the only wisdom."

But she shook off his hand angrily. And her voice trembled with
vexation.

"Life is horrible. How do you wish me to live it tranquil and happy?
It is a terrible light that your science throws upon the world. Your
analysis