"Several unforgettable things about man's first duty to the race--about not inflicting upon others the burdens Val and I must bear." "Burdens!" (Ah, she remembered now what they had been talking about.) "What burden, I'd like to know, does Val bear that you can't lift?" "Her father's." "Humph! And you?" "She and I are of one blood. We carry a double share." "And let me tell you"--she sat up straight in the great bed--"a double share of Gano is no bad addition to the world's brew." "Did you ever say that to Uncle John?" "Good Heaven! To hear you talk, a body'd think you had invented the law of heredity--you and your uncle John." "God forbid!" "Well, God _has_ forbid, and let that content you. He is quite capable of looking after His own world." Ethan's faint head-shake and his smile seemed to infuriate her. "My good soul, you take too much responsibility. It doesn't lie with you to refashion the world. God's universe has been good enough for a great many good people." "That it has been good enough for you doesn't cover the question," he said, brutally, adding in haste, "even if you didn't deceive yourself. It is not, as things are, good enough for all. But Uncle John was right: it would be a better place to live in if people hesitated to perpetuate disease." "Perpetuate disease! What folly you talk! Don't you see that your improved new modes of living breed new diseases? If you have not the cholera of my youth, you have the Bright's disease and the influenza that we knew nothing of. Disease is part of the plan." "What an awful doctrine!" "Not at all. _I_ can't be sure that it wouldn't leave the world poorer if disease were got rid of. I'm not, like you, ready to arraign the Everlasting." (Val opened the door softly, came in, and stood at the foot of the bed.) "To my finite mind, unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out. I only know that they are just, and that I am the work of His hand." "I envy you your faith." "No, you don't. You think yourself superior to it, and what's the result? You walk in darkness." "Not altogether in darkness." He looked across at the girl. "Yes, in darkness and in fear. Not the fear of God--that's tonic--but in the fear of pain. Oh, I've watched this phase of modern life. It's been coming, coming for years. The world to-day is crushed and whining under a load of sentimentality. People presently will be afraid to move, lest they do or receive some hurt." "All people don't wear your armor." "There is no armor but God," she said, in a clear voice. "'We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.'" He bent and kissed her hand. She withdrew it and laid it on his head, smoothing the thick, dark hair. "You carry one Gano burden that I pity you for: you think too much about life." "Ah, and it doesn't bear being thought about?"