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THE TOLL OF THE BUSH
CH. VII

Eve rose, looking troubled and disappointed. ‘That seems to be final,’ she said. ‘If you have not even the desire to believe——— What is it,’ she interrupted herself to inquire, ‘you find so attractive in science? For mankind it seems to offer little, and for the individual nothing.’

‘That is so,’ Geoffrey replied; ‘but the road has gone only a little way into the darkness. It is paved with truths, and truths are hard to come by. This is one,’ he added, laying his hand on a volume on the desk,—‘ the book Mr. Fletcher advised you not to read.’

‘Is the evolution of species so certain?’

‘Either that, or the Creator has laid a trap for our reason.’

‘Mr. Fletcher says that the Origin of Species does not disprove the Bible.’

‘That is as well, because evolution nowadays is regarded as much a fact as gravitation. But the Church is wise, and I doubt if it would be possible to produce any argument which would disprove the Bible,’

Eve pondered awhile, then looked up more brightly. ‘I do not despair of you yet,’ she said. ‘I feel that revelation is quite as certain as evolution, supposing that to be as certain as you think, and if you could feel the beauty of it as I do, you would be glad to think so also.’

This was the beginning of many similar conflicts between the pair.

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