was supposed to read the book, and talked about it in
a manner that discredited the supposition, but because she wanted to
decide once for all whether his theory of the endless return to life at
all suited her own case.

She turned over the pages, but she knew the main thought by heart. Time
is infinite. In space there is matter consisting of elements which,
however numerous, are limited in number, and can therefore only combine
in a finite number of ways. When those possible combinations are
exhausted, they must repeat themselves. And because time is infinite,
they must repeat themselves an infinite number of times. Therefore
precisely the same combinations have returned always and will return
again and again for ever. Therefore in the past, every one of us has
lived precisely the same life, in a precisely similar world, an infinite
number of times, and will live the same life over again, to the minutest
detail, an infinite number of times in the future. In the fewest words,
this is Nietzsche's argument to prove what he calls the "Eternal
Return."

No. That was not at all what she wished to believe, nor could believe,
though it was very plausible as a theory. If men lived over again, they
did not live the same lives but other lives, worse or better than the
first. Nietzsche in this was speaking only of matter which combined and
combined again. If it did, each combination might have a new soul of its
own. It was conceivable that different souls should be made to suffer
and enjoy in precisely the same way. And as for the rest, as for a good
deal of _Thus spake Zarathushthra_, including the Over-Man, and the
overcoming of Pity, and the Man who had killed God, she thought it
merely fantastic, though much of it was very beautiful and some of it
was terrible, and she thought she had understood what Nietzsche meant.

Tired of reading, she lay back in her deep chair and let the open book
fall upon her knees. She was in her own room, late in the morning, and
the blinds were drawn together to keep out the glare of the wide street,
for it was June and the summer was at hand. Outside, the air was all
alive with the coming heat, as it is in Italy at the end of spring, and
perhaps nowhere else. The sunshine seems to grow in it, like a living
thing, that also fills everything with life. It gets into the people,
too, and into their voices, and even the grave Romans unbend a little,
and laugh more gaily, and their step is more elasti