And suddenly the conviction is strong in me that I know why I am here, and what I shall be hereafter. In the awful silence of the night that conviction comes dropping down my dark mind like a falling star. In moments of acute dyspepsia I always feel it.” He grinned pleasantly. He had spoiled his own poetry, and that pleased him. In his former life he had always been trying to make pretty things, and had always broken them up again. The grin passed from him, and he continued: “Cows, therefore, have souls. You needn’t contradict me, and thrust that omniscient Dear Friend down my throat, because I won’t stand it. I tell you that I saw into their eyes, and I know. If you want to get at the bottom of things, you must leave all ordinary processes, all logical processes. You can’t crawl down that way: you must jump. The people who dare not jump see that you have got to the bottom of things, and comfort themselves with saying that you must have hurt your poor head terribly. Have I hurt my head, Mary? For my intellect is all gone, and the light is fading very quickly. You hate men, I think. Never despise them any more; for they have souls. They cut down the grass, and it dies. They pull the flowers, and they die. They tread on the beetles, and they die. They kill the animals, cut down the trees, and poison the rivers. Where a man comes, death always follows. They are murderers; they are hideously ugly; they make unpleasant noises, and do not understand silences; they are the very lowest of all creatures, but they are on their way to a hereafter. Nothing’s wasted: the very strictest economy is practised.” “I can’t understand you, Thomas; and I am afraid that you are getting worse. It tries you to talk. Why did you say the light was fading? The sun is still shining all over us. Oh, Thomas, you’ll be gone soon--may I cry now? I must.” Thomas did not seem to have heard her. “I have been wicked, and yet not I,” he said. “It was something bad in me that will pass. And the world did provoke me terribly; it would be so emotional and stupid.” Mary was crying unreservedly, but Thomas did not notice it. “Something,” he said, “has come into my head which wants thinking out, but I will not bother myself. I have the easier way. Good-bye--for the sake of old times--Mary, darling. I am going to know everything.” Then he curled up his legs quietly, and died. Mary stopped crying, and examined the body. Yes, he was quite dead. Then she started away on a journey. Thomas had been a wicked beetle, and he had talked wrongly in his last moments, and she was afraid to be near his body. Besides, she had heard of a vacancy.