Virginia was preparing, with a rueful face, to resume her enjoyment of
the higher pleasures, when a horrible smell, like that of an open drain,
was suddenly blown in through the window.
Virginia stopped her nose with her handkerchief. The Professor's conduct
was very different.
'Oh, rapture!' he cried, jumping up from his seat, 'I smell the missing
link.' And in another instant he was gone.
'Well,' said Virginia, 'here is one comfort. Whilst Paul is away I shall
be relieved from the higher pleasures. Alas!' she cried, as she flung
herself down on the sofa, 'he is so nice-looking, and such an
enlightened thinker. But it is plain he has never loved, or else very
certainly he would love again.'
Paul returned in about a couple of hours, again unsuccessful in his
search.
'Ah!' cried Virginia, 'I am so glad you have not caught the creature!'
'Glad!' echoed the Professor, 'glad! Do you know that till I have caught
the missing link the cause of glorious truth will suffer grievously?
The missing link is the token of the solemn fact of our origin from
inorganic matter. I did but catch one blessed glimpse of him. He had
certainly a silver band about his neck. He was about three feet high. He
was rolling in a lump of carrion. It is through him that we are related
to the stars--the holy, the glorious stars, about which we know so
little.'
'Bother the stars!' said Virginia; 'I couldn't bear, Paul, that anything
should come between you and me. I have been thinking of you and longing
for you the whole time you have been away.'
'What!' cried Paul, 'and how have you been able to forego the pleasures
of the intellect?'
'I have deserted them,' cried Virginia, 'for the pleasures of the
imagination, which I gathered from you were also very ennobling. And I
found they were so; for I have been imagining that you loved me. Why is
the reality less ennobling than the imagination? Paul, you shall love
me; I will force you to love me. It will make us both so happy: we shall
never go to hell for it; and it cannot possibly cause the slightest
scandal.'
The Professor was more bewildered than ever by these appeals. He
wondered how Humanity would ever get on if one half of it cared nothing
for pure truth, and persisted in following the vulgar impulses that had
been the most distinguishing feature of its benighted past--that is to
say, those ages of its existence of which any record has been preserved
for us. Luckily, however, Virginia came to his assistance.
'I think I know, Paul,' she said, 'why I do not care as I should do for
the intellectual pleasures. We have both been seeking them by ourselves;
and we have been therefore egoistic hedonists. It is quite true, as you
say, that selfishness is a despicable thing. Let me,' she went on,
sitting down beside him, 'look through your microscope along with you.
I think perhaps, if we shared the pleasure, the missing link's parasites
might have some interest for me.'
The Professor was overjoyed at this proposal. The two sat down side by
side, and tried their best to look simultaneously through the eye-piece
of the microscope. Virginia in a moment expressed herself much
satisfied. It is true they saw nothing; but their cheeks touched. The
Professor too seemed contented, and said they should both be in a state
of rapture when they had got the right focus. At last Virginia
whispered, with a soft smile--
'Suppose we put that nasty microscope aside; it is only in the way. And
then, oh, Paul; dear love, dove of a Paul! we can kiss each other to our
heart's content.'
Paul thought Virginia quite incorrigible, and rushed headlong out of the
room.