'I never intended to go as far as that,' he said, rather pettishly, and without any sign of gratitude for my offer; 'I don't care about actually dying, if she could only be made to believe I had died that would be quite enough for me. I could live on here, happy in the thought that I was saved from her scorn. But how can she be made to believe it?--that's the point.' 'Precisely,' I said. 'You can hardly write yourself and inform her that you died on the voyage. You might do this, though: sail to England as you propose, and go to see her under another name, and break the sad intelligence to her.' 'Why, to be sure, I might do that!' he said, with some animation; 'I should certainly not be recognised--she can have no photograph of me, for I have never been photographed. And yet--no,' he added, with a shudder, 'it is useless. I can't do it; I dare not trust myself under that roof! I must find some other way. You have given me an idea. Listen,' he said, after a short pause: 'you seem to take an interest in me; you are going to London; the Catafalques live there, or near it, at some place called Parson's Green. Can I ask a great favour of you--would you very much mind seeking them out yourself as a fellow-voyager of mine? I could not expect you to tell a positive untruth on my account--but if, in the course of an interview with Chlorine, you _could_ contrive to convey the impression that I died on my way to her side, you would be doing me a service I can never repay!' 'I should very much prefer to do you a service that you _could_ repay,' was my very natural rejoinder. 'She will not require strict proof,' he continued eagerly; 'I could give you enough papers and things to convince her that you come from me. Say you will do me this kindness!' I hesitated for some time longer, not so much, perhaps, from scruples of a conscientious kind as from a disinclination to undertake a troublesome commission for an entire stranger--gratuitously. But McFadden pressed me hard, and at length he made an appeal to springs in my nature which are never touched in vain, and I yielded. When we had settled the question in its financial aspect, I said to McFadden, 'The only thing now is--how would you prefer to pass away? Shall I make you fall over and be devoured by a shark? That would be a picturesque end--and I could do myself justice over the shark? I should make the young lady weep considerably.' 'That won't do at all!' he said irritably; 'I can see from her face that Chlorine is a girl of a delicate sensibility, and would be disgusted by the idea of any suitor of hers spending his last cohesive moments inside such a beastly repulsive thing as a shark. I don't want to be associated in her mind with anything so unpleasant. No, sir; I will die--if you will oblige me by remembering it--of a low fever, of a non-infectious type, at sunset, gazing at her portrait with my fading eyesight and gasping her name with my last breath. She will cry more over that!'