Melba herself has a simpler explanation: seven months of

So that besides rational knowledge, which had seemed to me the

only knowledge, I was inevitably brought to acknowledge that all

live humanity has another irrational knowledge -- faith which makes

it possible to live. Faith still remained to me as irrational as

it was before, but I could not but admit that it alone gives

mankind a reply to the questions of life, and that consequently it

makes life possible. Reasonable knowledge had brought me to

acknowledge that life is senseless -- my life had come to a halt

Great!（75）