To this wisdom there was no response.

“We were just talking,” Hester said, “before we had the pleasure of meeting you, about people and fish—comparing them in a way.”

“Look at that dogfish!” said Vavasor, pointing to the largest in the tank. “What a brute! I wouldn’t want to be compared to him. Don’t you just hate him, Miss Raymount?”

“I am not willing to hate any living thing,” answered Hester.

“Why shouldn’t you hate him? You would be doing the wretch no wrong.”

“How can you tell that unless you knew all about his nature and past existence?”

“You seem to imply motive and choice, even for an ugly fish, where I see no ground for either. The ugly things are ugly just because they are ugly. We must take things as we find them. We ourselves are just what we are and cannot help it. We are made so.”

“Then you think we are all just like the dogfish—except that destiny has made none of us quite so ugly?” asked Hester. “You do not believe in free will, then?”

“I see no ground for believing in it. We are but random forces. Everyone does just what is in him.”

“I say no. Everyone is capable of acting better than he does,” she replied.

“And why does he not then? How can he be made for it if he does not do it?”

“How indeed? That is the puzzle.”

“Then you believe we can make ourselves different from what we are made?”

“Yes. We are made with the power to change. We are meant to take a share in our own making. We are made so and so, it is true, but not made only that way. We are made with a power inside us that can lay hold of the original power that made us. We are not made to remain as we are. We are bound to grow.”

She spoke rapidly, her eyes glowing.

“You are too much of a philosopher for me, Miss Raymount,” said Vavasor with a smile. “But just answer me one question. What if a man is too weak to change?”

“He must change,” said Hester. “No one is too weak to change.”

Beginning to feel the conversation was becoming much too serious, Vavasor asked, “But don’t you think this is rather—ah—a bit too metaphysical for an aquarium?”

Hester did not reply. Nothing was too serious for her in any place. She was indeed a peculiar girl.

“Let us go see the octopus,” said Vavasor.

Mr. Raymount followed and gradually drew even with his son’s friend. He had heard the last turn of their conversation and now proceeded to pick up the edge of it, relating the ugliness of the fish around them to his rather oblique observations concerning art.

“A confoundedly peculiar family!” Vavasor thought to himself as they were leaving the place some time later. “There’s a bee in every one of their bonnets! An odd, irreverent way the old fellow has about him—pretending to believe everything he says.”