# They Called it Love

Extracted from Windsor magazine, v. 31 1909-10, pp. 305–315. 2068 AD: An exalted group in a grey London hospital, impassively study a strange exhibit—a girl put into deep sleep 157 years ago—and now brought back to life: who exhibits a strange animated behaviour. "They called it emotion."
THEY CALLED IT LOVE
By OWEN OLIVER
ON a spring morning of the year 2068, four persons stood at a plain grey table, in a plain grey room of the London Hospital. One was an old, old man, whom they called "Arch-Councillor," or briefly, "Arch." The second was the Chief Physician, a tall, thin, well-featured man of about thirty-five. The other two were women physicians, an elder and a younger. All four were dressed alike, in plain grey garments, divided at the legs; and all four had pale, greyish faces, as expressionless as masks.
The Chief Physician mixed crystals and essences in little vessels, until he had made a tiny glassful of bright yellow liquid. When he and the women had each tested a portion of it, he handed the glass to the Arch.
"It will give life or death," he stated, speaking as if life and death were nothing to him.
They approached a couch where a young girl lay inertly. Her features were rigid, but they had a look more lifelike than theirs, a look as if animation had been, or might be.
The Chief Physician opened her mouth with a pair of glass tongs: The Arch leaned on her pillow with one hand and poured the draught between her lips.
After a few seconds her fingers twitched, and then her face. Presently she drew her arms and legs in and out convulsively. Then she shuddered. Her hands plucked aimlessly at her gown, tore little fluffy fragments from it.
"Life?" the younger woman suggested.
"Reflex action," the Chief Physician corrected.
The girl shuddered again, and her fingers closed upon her long hair. The elder woman unclosed them carefully, but without tenderness.
The girl's lips opened slightly. A slow groaning sound came from them. Tears welled from under her closed eyelids. The younger woman pointed to the tears.
"What are they, Arch?" she asked, in a low, unmoved voice. Their voices were dull and expressionless, like their faces.
"They called them tears," the Arch answered.
"They served to remove dust and foreign matter from the eyes," the Chief Physician explained.
A faint colour grew upon the girl's cheeks. The Chief Physician felt her pulse, listened to her heart, peeped under her eyelids.
"She lives," he announced.
The girl opened her eyes and blinked through the tears. "Mother!" she murmured. "Mother!"
She tried feebly to brush the tears aside with her hands.
"Is it over?" she asked faintly. "The operation?"
"It is over," the Arch told her.
She closed her eyes and laughed hysterically under her breath.
"Why does she do that?" the younger woman asked.
"They called it emotion," the Arch stated. "It was purposeless."
"Have I slept long?" the girl asked wearily.
"One hundred and fifty-seven years," the Arch told her.
She raised herself unsteadily on one elbow and stared at the strange people and the strange room.
"Mother!" she called, in a frightened tone. "Mother!"
"Your mother is dead," said the Arch.
"Dead!" screamed the girl. "Dead! It is not true! It can't be true! Mother!"
The mask-like faces turned to the Arch.
"They mourned the dead in those days," he explained, "and sometimes they said what was not. Especially they printed it in their newspapers. There was a case of this in my own recollection. It was the first execution by somnite."
"Mother!" the girl screamed. "Mother! Elsie! Nurse! Doctor! It isn't true what he says! It isn't true!"
"Everything that is said now is true," the Arch assured her. "Your doctors found that the knife would not cure you, only Nature. So they put you in a trance with morovite, which had just been discovered. Nature has taken a hundred and fifty-seven years over the cure. Your acquaintances died at threescore years and ten, according to the habit of their days. They are all dead."
The girl clutched frantically at the arm of the younger woman.
"Dead?" she wailed. "Everyone! Won't you comfort me?"
The woman looked down upon her tear-stained, quivering face without movement of her own sphinx-like features.
"What does she mean, Arch?" she asked.
The Arch-Councillor waited in the Chief Physician's study, smoking a cigarette through a long tube resting upon a wire stand, which held medicated cones over the lighted end and the mouthpiece to absorb the fumes. He put it aside when the Chief Physician entered.
"She is sleeping from exhaustion," he announced. "Her vitality has sunk nearly eleven degrees. I had no idea that the emotions were so dangerous to life."
"They could not be otherwise," the Arch protested. "All activity wears out organisms. The activity necessary for rational life destroys our bodies in from 130 to 150 years. The activity wasted in these useless emotions reduced the period by half. This should be common knowledge."
The Chief Physician drew another wire stand towards him and sat down and smoked a heap of tobacco in a brazier under a cone.
"The gradual wear and tear of primitive feeling is described in all the text-books, of course," he stated; "but I had not realised that it could produce a violent effect at any particular moment. It appears to act upon the heart. She will die if this irrational excitement continues."
The Arch lit another smoking-tube.
"Cannot you prevent it?" he demanded.
"I could remove the emotions by anti-sentients."
"Could you not give her small doses, and merely reduce the emotions in quantity?"
"No. Their quality would be affected. You could not regard them as reliable samples of primitive emotion."
"Then she must die," the Arch-Councillor decided calmly. "Specimens of emotions are necessary to my investigations. I am not moved by idle curiosity as to a barbarous past; but from the past we learn the future. The future is millions of lives, and hers is only one."
"And that irrational," said the Chief Physician. "You will obtain the sanction of the Council, of course?"
"Yes." The Arch fixed his eyes upon the wall, which was grey, like most things in the rational world. They had arrived at the exact shade, by careful experiment, as causing the least distraction of thought by sense. "How many days is she likely to remain available for study?"
"Three or four. She will suffer."
"Mankind are many to suffer, and she is only one. Could not the outbursts be lessened, and her life consequently prolonged—it is important—by the simulation of emotion in those about her? I gather that her excitement is largely due to the absence of anything of the kind in her surroundings."
The Chief Physician took up a little crystal ball and gazed fixedly at it; a "thought-focus," it was termed.
"I fear we know too little about feeling to simulate its expression," he said. "It would be easier to reproduce some of the physical conditions of her times. I have read that emotion was influenced by colour and odour. We might get some coloured articles from the Museum for her room."
"'Dead!' she wailed."
"Yes," the Arch agreed. "You might try flowers also. They grow a few in the Museum gardens. From the curious species of ancient literature called 'poetry' I gather that the emotions attached with some strength to flowers; although from the crude philosophy of the Victorian era it would rather appear that they were due chiefly to touch. You could tell a nurse to put her arm round the woman. They termed it embracing. The Council will sanction the higher emoluments given for infectious and unpleasant duties. I still think that something might be done in the way of simulating emotion. For example, it seems to have been indicated by certain forms of address. 'My dear' was, I believe, a common phrase. I'll tell the Chief Reader of Antiquities to look it up, and let you know. Anyhow, you must do your best to keep her alive and emotional for a month. You are relieved from other duties. She is the only subject from whom we can gain first-hand knowledge, remember."
"First-hand knowledge," the Chief Physician mused, when the Arch-Councillor had gone. "Ye-es; but the only first-hand knowledge of feeling is to feel. If I diminished the anti-sentients in my diet, I might experience some of those emotions myself. No one need know and—I'll risk it!"
He gazed at the thought-focus for five minutes. Then he walked to a telephone and called up the Museum, and asked for specimens of ancient drapery and flowers.
"Not too vivid," he directed, "and the flowers should not be strongly odorous."
{{|II.}} The girl turned her head and smiled over the back of her chair when the Chief Physician entered.
There was a pale, pink ribbon in her grey gown (she had refused to wear the divided costume) and a bunch of pale flowers on the table beside her. Two pictures borrowed from the Museum made an oasis of colour in the desert of the grey walls. There was also a screen adorned with flaming yellow birds; but she had thrown a grey cloth over it, to spare her visitor's eyes.
The Chief Physician contorted his features in imitation of the emotion of greeting (he had studied it from ancient prints) and held out his hand. He had read of hand-shaking, and she had shown him how to do it.
"It is kind of you to come so often, doctor," she told him, with a little pink smile.
"Kind?" he asked doubtfully. "What kind?"
The girl laughed softly.
"It is my turn to ask questions," she asserted. "You promised to tell me all about your grey world when I was stronger; and to-day I walked in here quite alone. Don't I look well, doctor?"
The Chief Physician regarded her intently. There was a glimmer in the calmness of his eyes, as if behind them something was coming to life. He had reduced the anti-sentients somewhat rashly of late.
"You look—like your flowers," he told her. He had come to regard her colouring without displeasure. "I will answer your questions."
She leaned forward with a finger-tip touching her lips.
"First," she said, "what is your name? You have never told me."
"My name," he said, "is C A F Q 5 5 R 4 8 I N."
The girl laughed merrily. The Arch had noted, as the result of his study of her, that laughter was the prevailing form of Victorian emotion. He had recorded several specimens of the sound with the phonograph, and taken three series of living pictures illustrating the curious contortions of feature which accompanied it. He had also ascertained by the Vitometer the exact amount of energy wasted in its production.
"A B C and all the rest!" she said. "How funny! It is like a convict!"
"What is a convict?" he asked.
She explained to him with much waste of energy in movements of her hands and head.
"We have no convicts now," he told her. "If people are unworthy, they are removed; but that is not often. Everybody wishes to do what is right. And what is 'funny'?"
She gave him another animated explanation.
"I understand," he stated at last. "Funny was what you did not expect. We always know what to expect. So nothing is funny now."
"You are funny," she contradicted; "and your name is."
"No," he denied. "My name is not funny, when you understand it. It tells you just what to expect. C means that I am of the third rank—the next below councillor. A means that I am a male adult. F means that I am a doctor. Q indicates my degrees and distinctions in the profession. 55 tells that I am fifteen-sixteenths of English descent, and one-sixteenth Scotch, and was born in London. R is my letter in the schedule of personal characteristics. 4081 is my individual number. N shows that I am not married, nor, at present, designated for marriage. The numbers are unalterable. The letters change, if necessary, to correspond to the facts. So, you see, my name is always rational. Your name is 'funny.' Maud Mordaunt means nothing; and I suppose it never changed?"
"It would have changed if—I married. Then I should have taken my husband's name. Mrs. Something Something—Maud Something."
"I see. You would keep the 'Maud' to show that you were not your husband?"
"Oh!" she cried. "But you are funny!"
"Otherwise," he continued, "you would lose your identity."
"Yes," she admitted; "but I shouldn't mind, because—because I should have—have liked him, I suppose. Don't people nowadays?"
"Marry? Certainly; if they are selected by the Sub-Council for Futurity."
"Does the Sub-Council ask if they want to?"
"They want to do what is right, of course."
"But don't they—care for one another?"
The Chief Physician passed his hand over his forehead. He had imitated the trick from her originally, but it had become almost automatic. The waste of energy, he reckoned, would shorten his life by about a day.
"I am not sure what you mean," he confessed; "but I believe they acquire an idea of companionship—or the reverse."
"Oh!"—she leaned forward—"is that all?"
"What else could there be?" he asked.
"Have people no care for one another?" she cried. "No care at all?"
She held out her hands in a desperate gesture. He shook first one and then the other. He thought it must be the fashion of her days, and he had found it efficacious in arresting the particularly undesirable emotion formerly known as "tears."
"People are useful to one another," he stated.
"Useful! Useful! Doctor, you have been very kind to me; but for your kindness I should have died in this cold, grey world. If I died, wouldn't you care?"
The Chief Physician passed his hand over his forehead again.
"If you were dead," he said slowly, "you would be dead, and it would be useless to think about it. While you are alive, I regard such an event as undesirable; but I do not understand what you mean by 'care,' or 'kind.'"
"Try to understand," she begged. "Try!"
"I will consider anything you say very carefully," he promised.
She gave a little sigh of eagerness.
"When you give me flowers," she said, "that is kind. I feel pleased because you have given them to me. I look at them every few minutes, carry them with me when I go from room to room. That is caring."
"I see," he said thoughtfully. "You 'care' for the flowers."
"Yes, yes. But I care far more for the kindness of the giver. I thought you meant to be kind; but if you don't—— You shake hands with me as if you did. Doctor, haven't you any feeling of—of friendship?"
"Friendship?" He considered laboriously. "I suppose you allude to what we call 'preferences,' by which I mean the valuing of an object above its rational value. They are not a justifiable ground of action, and we endeavour to remove them by an increased use of anti-sentients, but—I think I 'prefer' you to be here, if that is what you mean."
"I mean—— Suppose I went? Would you feel that—that something had gone?"
Her hands moved restlessly. He shook them again, as an antidote to emotion.
"If you went, I should know you were gone," he said. "I am not sure if you would call it feeling; but I should 'prefer' you not to go away from me. In fact—you were speaking of marriage?"
"Yes?" She breathed quickly.
"It seems to me that you would be useful as a wife; and also, if you do not condemn such a weakness, that I should prefer you to other women. I thought of suggesting it to the Council. They can judge better than we; but as you look upon these matters so differently, I ask you first if you would—if you would 'care' for me—like you do for the flowers?"
"Oh!" the girl cried. "I should, if—if you were sure about the 'preference'!"
The Chief Physician took out his thought-focus and studied it gravely.
"I seem to feel it distinctly when we shake hands," he pronounced.
She held out both hands, and he took them.
"I think," he suggested, "it might help if I held them for a considerable time. Do you mind?"
"I do not mind," said the girl. "Won't you try to feel a little about things? About me? Isn't it possible?"
He squeezed her hands very tightly.
"It is possible," he owned. "But to make myself feel I should have to cease using the anti-sentients prescribed by law. The penalty is capital; and if you reported the matter to the Council—which, of course, would be your duty——"
The girl gave a little hurt cry.
"I would rather die myself than hurt you," she told him. "Can't you see that I—'prefer' you?"
She put one of his hands against her cheek for a moment. A feeling of preference ran up his arm and startled—almost frightened—him. He had diminished his anti-sentient diet to one-third, instead of two-thirds, that morning, and he thought that some terrible emotion, destructive of life, was about to come. He found, however, that the feeling was not painful; only as if the eyes of the girl drew him towards her. It was like an enlarged idea of preference, he decided; and it indicated quite plainly that she would not tell the Council.
"I have not taken the full quantity lately," he confessed. "Would it, in your opinion, be injurious to me if I discontinued them altogether for a time?"
"What are they?" she asked.
"They are those elements of food which remove the microbes of unreasonable activity. Consequently they prolong life; double it, practically. You might live to a hundred and fifty years, if you took them."
The girl held her head high.
"What is the use of life," she asked, "if life is not worth living? Life without tears and laughter! Life without—preferences!" .
She leaned towards him with her eyes shining.
"Are you sure that you 'prefer' me?" she asked. "Are you quite sure?"
He took up the thought-focus, but she snatched it from him and turned his face to look in her eyes. He found, to his surprise, that he could focus the question better there.
"Yes," he said. "I prefer you, my dear."
She laughed, and wiped her eyes on his sleeve, still holding to his hands.
"Why," she said, "do you call me that?"
"Isn't it right? " he asked. "I learnt it from a book."
She laughed again, a sweet, crying laugh that the Arch had not caught in his phonograph.
"Learn it from me," she said, "my dear!"
III.
The grey-faced Council of Life and Death sat, like statues, upon their grey thrones, and the Chief Physician stood before them with his arms folded. There was a tinge of colour on his cheeks, and his eyes seemed alive, unlike theirs.
"C A F Q 5 5 R 4 0 8 1 N," said the Arch-Councillor, "you are accused of abstinence from anti-sentients, to the detriment of your rational faculties and the shortening of your life."
"I have abstained from anti-sentients," he answered.
"You are also accused of inciting others to like abstinence, through the public and medical press, well knowing that such conduct would tend to shorten life."
"What life lost in length it would gain in breadth."
"That was a point for the Council, not for individual judgment."
"I knew that the Council would never admit the gain, unless experiment proved it."
"Mankind experimented upon the subject for thousands of years. You know the results?"
"The results of feeling cannot be known, only felt."
"Have you anything further to say before we judge you?"
"Only that you will judge in ignorance, not knowing what you have lost. If I forfeit the rest of my life, which should be a hundred years, the last few weeks will have been worth them all."
The Arch-Councillor turned to the rest of the Seven.
"Have you any questions to ask the accused?" he demanded.
They answered in the negative, one by one. He motioned the Chief Physician to a seat at the far end of the room. After a few minutes' deliberation, he summoned him again.
"Your life is dangerous to the race," he said. "It must therefore cease. The Council allow you one week to put your affairs in order. Recognising your past services, they will grant you any reasonable request."
The Chief Physician bowed.
"I ask to be relieved of the use of anti-sentients during the week," he said, "and that the same favour may be accorded to the unnamed woman formerly known as Maud Mordaunt. I also ask to be allowed to marry her."
"It is granted," said the Arch-Councillor.
The girl was listening with the door ajar for the Chief Physician to return. She flung herself into his arms when he entered.
"Tell me," she begged. "Tell me."
He stroked her hair and kissed her on the lips, a wonderful fashion that he had learnt from a bygone story.
"I die in a week," he stated, "my dear."
She clung to him for a long time silently.
"Is there no appeal?" she asked at length.
"I can appeal to the world before I am executed; but the law is clear, and appeal is quite useless."
"No, no. It would at least delay the sentence and give us longer together. It would be months before they could vote, all over the world."
He smiled tolerantly. He had learnt to smile a little.
"We have thought-machines," he stated, "which can record the votes of everyone in the world in a few minutes. They would all support the Council, naturally."
"The Council are fiends!" she cried passionately.
"I do not know what fiends are," he said, "but the Council are just and merciful. I may marry you first, and we are not compelled to take anti-sentients during the week. You must take them immediately afterwards. They will remove your—'grief,' I think you call it."
"I shall die when you do," she told him firmly. "There will be no afterwards—here. There was another life, they taught in my days; and perhaps—— But you do not believe in those things."
He sat on a grey sofa—she had draped the head with a coloured rug—and drew her to him.
"When our feelings went," he said, "we lost God. But now you shall teach me to find Him!"
She taught him in the quaint words of an archaic volume that he had borrowed for her from the Museum library. They found it in the great room labelled Superstitions and Mythology. Presently she came to the words: "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife": and she smiled up at him, and he smiled down on her.
"She went on with her lover, out of the great door."
"Your God knew more than the Council," he declared. "Will you marry me now, my dear?"
"With all my heart," said the girl; and she rose and took his arm, and they went and were married. She had put one white rose in his jacket and another in her hair, but the roses on her cheeks were many and pink. The Registrar flushed a little, too, when she looked at them holding hands.
"You will be very useful to each other," she said, "and I wish that your time were longer."
The girl took the Registrar in her arms and kissed her firmly; and when they had gone, the Registrar sat down on her grey stool and rocked herself to and fro, and cried.
"I want—something!" she sobbed.
For the anti-sentients could not take the curiosity from a woman; and when she had read the Chief Physician's articles, she had discontinued them, to see what would happen.
IV.
The Chief Physician and his wife were sitting close together when the summons came to the Hall of Judgment. They held to one another silently for a few moments. Then he raised her face with his hand and looked at her.
"No," she answered his eyes. "Do not ask me to live when you have gone. It would not be life."
"No," he agreed. "It would not be life."They would give her the anti-sentients, he knew.
They went together down the stairs. The doctors and nurses gathered round them in the Hall. They, too, had experimented and grown human, learnt to laugh and smile. And now they learnt sighs and tears. For none can have the joy of life without the sorrow.
"You have taught us to live," one said.
"If the Council know, we shall die," said another.
A third wrung her hands and wailed that life was vain, for death would end it all.
"Death is not the end," the girl told them; and when they questioned her, she gave them the faded book from the Museum lumber-room.
"It tells of another country," she said, "afterwards—the country of God!"
"Are you going there?" one asked.
"We are going there," she said; and she went on with her lover, out of the great door.
A silent crowd waited outside the hospital gates. The girl shrank from them, for she had not been out in the strange world before, and their upturned faces were like a cold, grey sea, and their clothes were grey, and the plain, straight houses—everything!
"It is we who shall live!" she cried. "These are dead, and all your world. It is better to die!" Her voice broke suddenly. For the sun shone on the edge of a cloud, and the words of an old poet came to her: "The warm precincts of the cheerful day." There was still the light to leave—the warmth and the light!
She turned her face upon her lover's shoulder, and would not look at the grey forms around; but he regarded them intently, and stopped by one who held out her hand furtively and pressed it.
"She was my sister," he whispered, putting the world in the past tense. "She has learnt, and so have others. Their hearts have changed; but they made their faces grey with powder, fearing the Seven."
"They will vote by their hearts, not their faces," the girl said eagerly.
"They are only a few out of the few who have read my writings," he answered. "Most of the people would not read them; and most of those who read would condemn them. There is no hope, my dear."
But the girl looked hopefully at the grey faces. Sometimes she saw a spot of pink or white, and sometimes the streak of a tear, and then she smiled.
A woman bent and kissed her skirt as she passed.
"There is one," she said.
A man pulled the woman hastily away, for fear any should see.
"He cares for her," the girl said.
Another man held a crippled child on his shoulder, so that the boy should see them pass.
"He cares for the child," she whispered. Another whispered in the Chief Physician's ear: "Appeal! Appeal!" A young woman, hiding herself in a shawl, pressed a few flowering weeds into the girl's hand.
"She cares," she whispered.
"There are millions who do not care," the Chief Physician told her. "There is none can help us—none!"
"There is God!" she cried. "God!"
"Ah!" he said. "But He is not here."
As if any could know the whereabouts of God!
They turned the corner of a street, and the great Hall of Judgment towered over them, a thousand feet high and a thousand feet through, a great hemisphere of marble that shone grey in the sun; for it was grey like the rest of the world. But the stairs that led to the Platform of Doom were white, to show that the grey world ended there.
The Chief Physician stopped at their foot and put his arm round the girl.
"Will you still come?" he asked. "It is—death!"
She smiled up at him, and they went on together. There were none to stop her, for none bad thought that any would go with the doomed, and none dared follow up the white stairs.
They passed through a long, white tunnel and came out on the Platform of Doom in the centre of the great Hall. The grey people of higher rank sat all round in circles and galleries; and before them on grey thrones sat the Seven. A little white pathway led from the platform to a white marble cupola. Death came within it—silently. The Arch-Councillor pointed there.
"Go! "he told the Chief Physician.
A woman's cry rang out sharply from an upper row. The anti-anti-sentients had found, it seemed, a single disciple.
The Chief Physician faced the Seven.
"I appeal to the people," he said.
There was a moment's hush. Then the Arch-Councillor touched a knob, and a gentle humming sound began.
"It calls the world to judgment," the Chief Physician told the girl.
"It is but a little sound," she protested.
"Everyone can hear it everywhere," he assured her.
After a few minutes the sound ceased. Then the Arch-Councillor spoke to a little box, like a grey writing-slope, on the table before him. It was the World-voice, the Chief Physician whispered, and sounded all over the earth; and though the Arch-Councillor scarcely raised his voice above a whisper, they heard every word.
"C A F Q 5 5 R 4 0 8 1 M appeals for life," he said. "He is convicted by the British Council of Life and Death, under the first law of the Universal Constitution, of abstaining from anti-sentients, and of inciting others through the press to do so.
"The facts are not in dispute, but he challenges the law.
"The ground of the law, as all should know, is that anti-sentients prolong life from about seventy years to about 140 years, by limiting vital activity to rational and life-preserving functions.
"The convicted man admits this, but alleges that the non-reasonable a third functions are a valuable form of life, so that their disuse merely increases its breadth at the expense of its length.
"The Chief Physician pointed to a third column … that had risen golden … to the topmost dome."
"He represents that the value of these functions could only be judged by experience, and that he aimed at obtaining this by experiment.
"The Council consider that sufficient experience of this point was gained in the past history of mankind; that the non-rational impulses were proved to be disastrous to the race; and that any further experiment was forbidden by the Constitution.
"You will vote for life or death when the word is given."
The Arch-Councillor turned from the "World-voice" to the Chief Physician.
"Is the case fairly stated?" he asked.
"Yes," said the Chief Physician.
"No!" cried the girl. "No!"
"The question does not. concern you," the Arch-Councillor told her.
"It does," she insisted. "For if he dies, I shall die also."
The Seven consulted together. Then the Arch-Councillor answered her.
"You may speak," he said calmly.
She clenched her hands against her breast and drew a deep breath.
"The feelings which you condemn, and do not know," she said, "do more than increase the breadth and depth of life. They promise us another life—a life after death. They show us God!"
"God?" asked the Arch-Councillor. "Who is He?"
"The Power that rules this world, and every other world, this life and life hereafter. A Power"—she swept out her arms—"that is greater than you and the Seven, and all to whom you have spoken."
"Then," said the Arch-Councillor, "He can rule, if He thinks fit, the voting." And he turned again to the World-voice.
"Your decision," he announced, "involves also the unnamed woman, who has survived under morovite, from the earlier world, and who possesses the non-rational feelings to such degree that she desires to die with the man who is convicted. The Council assent, considering her existence dangerous. You can judge the consequences of the non-rational feelings by her action.
"She alleges that these feelings promise a further life after death, and evince the existence of a Supreme and Everlasting Power termed God, Who rules the Universe. As such a Power could intervene if It chose, there are no rational grounds for considering it in your voting. The vote will now be taken."
"Where do they vote?" the girl whispered with a shudder. "How?"
The Chief Physician showed her two grey columns of hollow glass, one on either side of the platform, and rising to the top of the huge dome.
"The votes are recorded in them," he whispered, "by a change of colour. White for life and black for death. Look!"
She looked; and the column to the left blackened swiftly foot by foot, from the stem upwards; and the column to the right said "Life" slowly, in inches of white. It was white only to her waist when the black column was ten times her height.
"They do not understand," she cried. "Cannot I tell them? Is there none to help us? None?"
"None," said the Chief Physician, "unless—but I think there is no God!"
The girl clasped her hands and lifted them and looked up, moving her lips.
"God!" she prayed softly. "Dear God!"
The black column and the white column still mounted swiftly and slowly; the girl dropped her hands—— And suddenly the Chief Physician pointed to a third column behind them, that had risen golden, like a column of sun, to the topmost dome.
"Your God has heard," he said brokenly. "Heard! He is greater than the Seven!"
The girl was lying on the grey sofa in their room when next she remembered, and the Chief Physician was bending over her, with the first tears of his life in his eyes. When she was well enough to speak, he sat close beside her and told her the rest.
The golden column recorded the vote of those who objected to the terms of reference, he said; and till he had turned his head he had forgotten that such a vote could be given. It had prevailed over the others, and so there must be a fresh voting; and there had been other votes, while she lay in his arms in the faint, to settle the issue. And the decision was that the world would discontinue the use of anti-sentients for a week; and then, when they knew the worth or unworth of the feelings, they would vote again for his and her life or death.
"I do not fear this voting," he told her. But, when the week was over, there was no voting. The crowd cheered them through the streets, and caught at their hands, and held their garments as they went to the Hall; and the Arch-Councillor met them and led them, one by each hand, up the main steps and along the great aisle to the seats of the Seven; and there he offered up thanks for the new knowledge of life that had come to them; and when he had finished, he turned to the girl.
"Dear woman from the bygone world," he said, "how shall I name this new wisdom that you have brought to us?"
"They called it love!" she said.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1933, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 90 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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