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him.
    The maidens streamed into his classroom this day like rose petals blown by the wind, and Echion licked his lips. He saw Aspasia and noticed, with his physician’s eyes, that she appeared perturbed and preoccupied. That was an omen that she would be more contentious than usual. She sat down on one of the chairs and looked at him with distant eyes. It did not occur to him that she was hardly aware of his presence. He thought, in his egotism, that she was thinking of him and the lesson to come. He gave her a wary smile, to which she did not respond. She looked down at her clasped hands.
    “We will discuss, today,” he said, thinking that his classroom resembled a garden of flowers, and rejoicing in the vision, “the truth that a sound body is the result of a sound mind. We have discussed this before, but I wish to enlarge on it.”
    Aspasia came to herself and raised an imperative hand. Echion frowned, but he inclined his head. “It is your argument, Echion, that a man is his own malady and that health is only a matter of judicious thought and a serene philosophy.”
    “True, Aspasia.”
    “Then all ills, apart from an accident, are created in the mind of the sufferer?”
    “True.”
    Aspasia smiled contemptuously. “Then an infant or a young child, afflicted with the White Sickness, is responsible for his deathly ailment?”
    The physician stared at her, nonplussed. Aspasia smiled again. “An infant is born with a deformity or an illness which will kill him. Tell me, sire, if he is to be accused of wrong thinking.”
    Echion felt less than affection for the maiden and became insensible to her charms. He coughed slightly. “There is a theory among the Egyptians that men carry with them, into their present lives, mental corruptions of previous lives, and the corruption appears in their extant bodies.”
    “Do you believe that, my teacher?”
    It was not accepted by the Ecclesia that men had lived prior lives to their current one. Echion felt himself in danger from this disputatious chit. He said, with caution, “There are many mysterious things, my child.”
    “But you have advanced the theory that man is his own malady! Tell me, then, how an infant, just born, can be diseased, and die of that disease.”
    The physician lifted his hands and beamed like the sun and resorted to an aphorism. “Who knows what is in the mind of a child?”
    Aspasia said, “Infanthood is not far behind me, nor childhood, and I am, at fourteen, still young. I recall my infant and childish thoughts. They were not mysterious. They were concerned with appetite and little pleasures, as are all the thoughts of all children. Why, then, am I in health and others sicken?”
    “You had parents of health,” said Echion.
    Aspasia said, “I never knew my father nor did I ever hear his voice. My mother died three years ago. My mother was not of the best of constitutions, otherwise she would not have died of the plague of the lungs.” She paused. “You have remarked that I had parents of health. Is it possible, then, that a healthy child will be the offspring of healthy parents? Yet I have seen slaves in this house who were not of a sturdy body, who gave birth to children who were neither sick nor deformed. I have also seen a young and vigorous mother delivered of a child who could not survive, so ridden with illness was he. Considering these things, should we be careful not to say that every ill is self-wrought, and therefore we should not despise the sufferer?”
    “Medicine,” said the physician, his face a deep and swollen red, “is an exact science. But every man is an individual and what will kill one man will not disturb another or cause him any inconvenience.”
    “It is, you will admit, a mysterious and occult and subjective art? It is unique that it is not applicable to every man?”
    This was against all Echion’s convictions and theories. He bit his lip.
    Aspasia smoothed her hair with both hands and her smile was derisive.