While the others were discussing the letter among themselves, he sat down near Nora, and talked long and eagerly with her--until some of the others noticed that she often passed her hand across her eyes. The conversation ceased; looks were turned towards them. Fru Rendalen proposed that they should have some music; she asked her son to play something. "With pleasure," he said, but remained sitting thoughtfully. "What should you say to my first endeavouring to combat the depression which often overcomes a woman when her eyes are opened to her inheritance of frailty?" Yes, they would all like to hear him. He said he had been reminded that evening of how, more than a year ago, he had spoken at a meeting of the Society in a very desponding manner on heredity. This had really only arisen from a feeling of depression. His opinion of heredity was simply this, that one inherited quality combats another. One need not be so desponding. In the course of time all families are so mixed together that any legacy of evil (which one must strive to reduce to impotence) has almost always beside it a legacy of good which may be strengthened by use. That is to say, never be guided by chance, but let the teacher first, and ourselves afterwards, be watchful betimes. He was so imbued with the subject that he was able, on the spot, to give a number of historical examples. He added others to them, gathered from his own and others' experience. The question had occupied him from his boyhood. In his own family there was a predisposition to insanity. Every case which he could trace showed plainly that only when the weakness which led to insanity had been allowed to increase, did this infirmity break out. When this weakness was opposed by the intermixture of fresh blood, by education and self-education, that person was saved for his work in life. Heredity was not a destiny, but a condition. It was sometimes said that knowledge and surroundings were no help. But what did the letter tell us which had just been read? First, most distinctly, that Tora had an inherited weakness; next, that if Miss Hall had given her lecture four months sooner, Tora at any rate would have been saved, "So we may well say, 'Help one another,' by knowledge and fearless counsel. Woman has been condemned to isolation. Man has sought fellowship and knowledge. Only by fellowship will women teach each other to fight for their own cause. "'The inward development,' is subject to crises, and then intercourse is burdensome; with this each one must deal as she can. But there is no doubt that we advance our inward development only by doing our duty."