"_If_," she interrupted, scenting danger.
He ignored the interruption as a thing of slight value he was accustomed to.
'"If we accept this point of view,'" he continued, '"we must believe that in plants there exists a faint copy of _what we know as consciousness in ourselves_ .'"
He laid the paper down and steadily stared at her. Their eyes met. He had italicized the last phrase.
For a minute or two his wife made no reply or comment. They stared at one another in silence. He waited for the meaning of the words to reach her understanding with full import. Then he turned and read them again in part, while she, released from that curious driving look in his eyes, instinctively again glanced over her shoulder round the room. It was almost as if she felt some one had come in to them unnoticed.
"We must believe that in plants there exists a faint copy of what we know as consciousness in ourselves."
"_If_," she repeated lamely, feeling before the stare of those questioning eyes she must say something, but not yet having gathered her wits together quite.
"_Consciousness_," he rejoined. And then he added gravely: "That, my dear, is the statement of a scientific man of the Twentieth Century."
Mrs. Bittacy sat forward in her chair so that her silk flounces crackled louder than the newspaper. She made a characteristic little sound between sniffling and snorting. She put her shoes closely together, with her hands upon her knees.
"David," she said quietly, "I think these scientific men are simply losing their heads. There is nothing in the Bible that I can remember about any such thing whatsoever."
"Nothing, Sophia, that I can remember either," he answered patiently. Then, after a pause, he added, half to himself perhaps more than to her: "And, now that I come to think about it, it seems that Sanderson once said something to me that was similar.
"Then Mr. Sanderson is a wise and thoughtful man, and a safe man," she quickly took up, "if he said that."
For she thought her husband referred to her remark about the Bible, and not to her judgment of the scientific men. And he did not correct her mistake.
"And plants, you see, dear, are not the same as trees," she drove her advantage home, "not quite, that is."