"I name them!" he interrupted. "There were Karl von Goertz, Albrecht Hardman, Adolph zu Sternbern, Karl von Starnack, and Rudolph von Wardberg. We were all friends--" "Yes," she said softly, "all friends, and all fools. Sometimes I think of my mother." "My dear, your mother!" "But I must tell this as it was! Then, sir, these six, all Heidelberg men, all well born, men of fortune, all men devoted to science, and interested in the study of the hopelessness of the average human being in Central Europe--these fools, or heroes, I say not which--they decided to do something in the interest of science. They were of the belief that human beings were becoming poor in type. So they determined to marry--" "Naturally," said I, seeking to relieve a delicate situation--"they scorned the marriage of convenience--they came to our American way of thinking, that they would marry for love." "You do them too much credit!" said she slowly. "That would have meant no sacrifice on either side. They married in the interest of _science!_ They married with the deliberate intention of improving individuals of the human species! Father, is it not so?" Some speech stumbled on his tongue; but she raised her hand. "Listen to me. I will be fair to you, fairer than you were either to yourself or to my mother. "Yes, these six concluded to improve the grade of human animals! They resolved to marry _among the peasantry_--because thus they could select finer specimens of womankind, younger, stronger, more fit to bring children into the world. Is not that the truth, my father?" "It wass the way we thought," he whispered. "It wass the way we thought wass wise." "And perhaps it was wise. It was selection. So now they selected. Two of them married German working girls, and those two are dead, but there is no child of them alive. Two married in Austria, and of these one died, and the other is in a mad house. One married a young Galician girl, and so fond of her did he become that she took him down from his station to hers, and he was lost. The other--" "Yes; it was my father," she said, at length. "There he sits, my father. Yes, I love him. I would forfeit my life for him now--I would lay it down gladly for him. Better had I done so. But in my time I have hated him. "He, the last one, searched long for this fitting animal to lead to the altar. He was tall and young and handsome and rich, do you see? He could have chosen among his own people any woman he liked. Instead, he searched among the Galicians, the lower Austrians, the Prussians. He examined Bavaria and Saxony. Many he found, but still none to suit his scientific ideas. He bethought him then of searching among the Hungarians, where, it is said, the most beautiful women of the world are found. So at last he found her, that peasant, _my mother!_" The silence in the room was broken at last by her low, even, hopeless voice as she went on.