“I am not so sure of that!” she said. “Now please don’t think I am losing my senses, for I’m not! I’m perfectly sane, and my thoughts are particularly clear. But Science is a terrible thing!--it is a realisation more or less of the Egyptian Sphinx--a sort of monster with the face of a spirit and the body of an animal. Science, dear Madame--please don’t look so frightened--has lately taught men more about killing each other than curing! It also tells us that nothing is, or can be lost; all sights and sounds are garnered up in the treasure-houses of air and space. The forms and faces of human creatures long dead are about us,--the _aura_ of their personalities remains though their bodies have perished. Now _I_ feel just as if I had unconsciously absorbed somebody else’s outward personality--and here I am, making use of it as a sort of cover to my own. My own interior self admires my outward appearance without any closer connection than that felt by anyone looking at a picture. I live _within_ the picture--and no one seeing the picture could think it was I!” Poor Madame Dimitrius listened to Diana’s strange analysis of herself with feelings of mingled bewilderment and terror. In her own mind she began to be convinced that her son’s “experiment” would destroy his “subject’s” mentality. “It seems all very dreadful!” she murmured, tremblingly. “And I think, dear Diana, you should say something of this to Féodor. For I am afraid he is making you suffer, and that you are unhappy.” “No,--that is not so,” and Diana smiled reassuringly. “I do not suffer--I have forgotten what suffering is like! And I am not unhappy, because what is called ‘happiness’ has no special meaning for me. I exist--that is all! I am conscious of the principal things of existence--air, light, movement--these keep me living without any real effort or desire on my own part to live!” She spoke in a dreamy way, with a far-off look in her eyes,--then, perceiving that Madame Dimitrius looked nervously distressed, she brought herself back from her dreamland as it were with an effort, and went on: “You must not worry about me in the least, dear Madame! After all, it may be an excellent thing for me that I appear to have done with emotions! One has only to think how people constantly distress themselves for nothing! People who imagine themselves in love, for instance!--how they torment themselves night and day!--if they fail to get letters from each other!--if they quarrel!--if they think themselves neglected!--why, it is a perpetual turbulence! Then the parents who spend all their time looking after their children!--and the children grow up and go their own way,--they grow from pretty little angels into great awkward men and women, and it is as if one had played with charming dolls, and then saw them suddenly changed into clothes-props! Well, I am free from all these tiresome trivialities--I have what I think the gods must have,--Indifference!” Madame Dimitrius sighed.