"Why, can it be?" she said--to herself, but audibly--after a moment of silence, during which she also had been apparently absorbed in the contemplation of some inhabitant of the watery cage. But she had in truth been thinking of nothing immediately before her eyes, though they had rested first upon a huge crayfish, balancing himself on stilts innumerable, then turned to one descending a rocky incline--just as a Swiss horse descends a stair in a mountain-path. "Yes, the fellow bristles with _whys_," said Vavasor, whose gaze was still fixed on one of them. "Every leg seems to ask 'Why am I a leg?'" "I should have thought it was asking rather, 'What am I? Am I a leg or a failure?'" rejoined Hester. "But I was not thinking of the crayfish. He is odd, but there is no harm in him. He looks, indeed, highly respectable. See with what a dignity he fans himself!" "And for the same reason," remarked her father, who had come up and stood behind them, "as the finest lady at the ball: he wants more air. I wonder whether the poor fellow knows he is in a cage?" "I think he does," said Saffy, "else he would run away from us." "Are you thinking of the dog-fish still?" asked Vavasor. The strangeness, as it seemed to him, of the handsome girl's absorption, for such it veritably appeared, in questions of no interest in themselves--so he judged them--attracted him even more than her beauty, for he did not like to feel himself unpossessed of the entree to such a house. Also he was a writer of society verses--not so good as they might have been, but in their way not altogether despicable--and had already begun to turn it over in his mind whether something might not be made of--what shall I call it?--the situation? "I _was_ thinking of him," Hester answered, "but only as a type of the great difficulty--why there should be evil or ugliness in the world. There must be an answer to it! Is it possible it should be one we would not like?" "I don't believe there is any answer," said Vavasor. "The ugly things are ugly just because they are ugly. It is a child's answer, but not therefore unphilosophical. We must take things as we find them. We are ourselves just what we are, and cannot help it. We do this or that because it is in us. We are made so." "You do not believe in free will, then, Mr. Vavasor?" said Hester coldly. "I see no ground for believing in it. We are but forces--bottled up forces--charged Leyden jars. Every one does just what is in him--acts as he is capable." He was not given to metaphysics, and, indeed, had few or no opinions in that department of inquiry; but the odd girl interested him, and he was ready to meet her on any ground. He had uttered his own practical unbelief, however, with considerable accuracy. Hester's eyes flashed angrily. "I say _no_. Every one is capable of acting better than he does," she replied; and her face flushed. "Why does he not then?" asked Vavasor. "Ah, why?" she responded.