‘Yes; this must be the last time,’ she said, her voice suddenly dropping into a sigh, and her mood changing as rapidly. A house is dreary on the eve of departure. Boxes in the hall, pinafores on the furniture, the pretty china, the most valuable nicknacks all carried away and locked up--even the habitual books disturbed from their places, the last _Pall Mall_ on the table. The cloud came over her face as shadows flit over the hills, coming down even while she was speaking. ‘The last time!’ she said. ‘I can’t help shivering. Has it grown cold? or is it that someone is walking over my grave, as people say?’ ‘Why, Annie, I never knew you were superstitious.’ ‘No. It is a new thing for me; but that is scarcely superstition. And why should I care who walked over my grave? I must die some time or other and be buried, unless they have taken to burning before then. But there is one thing I feel a great deal about,’ she added, suddenly. ‘I said it once before, and you were frightened, James. If you knew that I was going to die of a painful disease--_must_ die--that nothing could happen to save me, that there was nothing before me but hopeless pain--James, dear, listen to me!--don’t you think you would have the courage for my sake to make an end of me, to put me out of my trouble?’ ‘Annie, for Heaven’s sake don’t talk so. It is nonsense, but it makes me unhappy.’ ‘As a matter of speculation,’ she said, with a knowledge of his weakness, ‘you can’t think it would be wrong to do it--do you, James?’ ‘As a matter of speculation,’ he said; and the natural man awoke in him. He forgot the pain the idea had caused him, and thought of it only as an idea; to put it in other words, the woman beguiled him, and he got upon one of his hobbies. ‘There are many things one allows as speculation which one is not fond of in fact. People must have a certain power over their own lives, and I think with you, my love, that it is no charity to keep infirm and suffering people just alive, and compel them to drag their existence on from day to day. Notwithstanding Heaven’s canon ‘gainst self-slaughter, I think people should be allowed a certain choice. I am not altogether against euthanasia; and if indeed recovery is hopeless and life only pain----’ ‘Yes, James,’ she said, eagerly, her eyes lighting up, her cheeks flaming with the red of excitement; ‘I am glad you see it like that; one might go further perhaps--when from any reason life was a burden; when one was useless, hopeless, unhappy----’