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I said yes.

During our conversation, I was under the same impression that I had, when I went to see Mme. Smilowicz. I was no longer ‘up-to-date,’ for I had long given up reading. — Obojanski talked at length to me about various changes that had latterly taken place in his field of science.

Those last years had been lost for me. My abandonment of the “Ice-plains” had cost me dear. I had learned nothing by having become acquainted with Life; I was not capable of forming any synthetic views about it. The more we know of it, the less is it possible to comprehend it in any systematized generalization. — Everything in Life contradicts everything else: Science is by far more consistent.

“But,” Obojanski asked, “to what am I to ascribe your return?”

“To Smilowicz.”

“I don’t mean that. There must have been something deeper down — some change in your mind and views, eh?”

He no doubt expected to hear some romantic phrases about the barrenness of life