He is profoundly suggestive.
Will his race melt away in the heat of a collision with a higher? Are the
men of the future to see his bones only in museums--a vestige of one link
that spanned between the dog and the white man? He wakes thoughts that run
far out into the future and back into the past."
Gregory was not quite sure how to take these remarks. Being about a
Kaffer, they appeared to be of the nature of a joke; but, being seriously
spoken, they appeared earnest; so he half laughed and half not, to be on
the safe side.
"I've often thought so myself. It's funny we should both think the same; I
knew we should if once we talked. But there are other things--love, now,"
he added. "I wonder if we would think alike about that. I wrote an essay
on love once; the master said it was the best I ever wrote, and I can
remember the first sentence still--'Love is something that you feel in your
heart.'"
"That was a trenchant remark. Can't you remember any more?"
"No," said Gregory, regretfully; "I've forgotten the rest. But tell me
what do you think about love?"
A look, half of abstraction, half amusement, played on her lips.
"I don't know much about love," she said, "and I do not like to talk of
things I do not understand; but I have heard two opinions. Some say the
devil carried the seed from hell and planted it on the earth to plague men
and make them sin; and some say, that when all the plants in the garden of
Eden were pulled up by the roots, one bush that the angels planted was left
growing, and it spread its seed over the whole earth, and its name is love.
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