He pointed to the hut which they had almost reached.
"That's it!" answered Seaton--"And I prefer it to any palace ever built. No servants, no furniture, no useless lumber--just a place to live in--enough for any man."
"A tub was enough for Diogenes"--commented Gwent--"If we all lived in his way or your way it would be a poor look-out for trade! However, I presume you'll escape taxation here!"
Seaton made no reply, but led the way into his dwelling, offering his visitor a chair.
"I hope you've had breakfast"--he said--"For I haven't any to give you. You can have a glass of milk if you like?"
Gwent made a wry face.
"I'm not a good subject for primitive nourishment"--he said--"I've been weaned too long for it to agree with me!"
He sat down. His eyes were at once attracted by the bowl of restless fluid on the table.
"What's that?" he asked.
Roger Seaton smiled enigmatically.
"Only a trifle"--he answered--"Just health! It's a sort of talisman;--germ-proof, dust-proof, disease-proof! No microbe of mischief, however infinitesimal, can exist near it, and a few drops, taken into the system, revivify the whole."
"If that's so, your fortune's made"--said Gwent, "Give your discovery, or recipe, or whatever it is, to the world---"
"To keep the world alive? No, thank you!" And the look of dark scorn on Seaton's face was astonishing in its almost satanic expression--"That is precisely what I wish to avoid! The world is over-ripe and over-rotten,--and it is over-crowded with a festering humanity that is INhuman, and worse than bestial in its furious grappling for self and greed. One remedy for the evil would be that no children should be born in it for the next thirty or forty years--the relief would be incalculable,--a monstrous burden would be lifted, and there would be some chance of betterment,--but as this can never be, other remedies must be sought and found. It's pure hypocrisy to talk of love for children, when every day we read of mothers selling their offspring for so much cash down,--lately in China during a spell of famine parents killed their daughters like young calves, for food. Ugly facts like these have to be looked in the face--it's no use putting them behind one's back, and murmuring beautiful lies about 'mother-love' and such nonsense. As for the old Mosaic commandment 'Honour thy father and mother'--it's ordinary newspaper reading to hear of boys and girls attacking and murdering their parents for the sake of a few dollars."