Look at his ideal of comfort--to shuffle about the countryside doing nothing; to have food to eat; to get comfortably drunk. How in such character the courage to die so suddenly, so horribly? How? Lo, How was more impossible than Why. Nay, How was Why. What but supremest love could have invested him with strength to go to such a death? What but divinest love to conceive of such a sacrifice? And love was out of consideration. Useless to try to delude these questions with: "He must have loved me." Clear that he could not have. Then why? Then done by possession of what attribute? Was there some quality in life unknown to Mr. Wriford? II Ah, was there? That same question, a barrier insurmountable, a void dark, boundless, unfathomable, similar to that which ended his questioning of Mr. Puddlebox's sacrifice, ended also his searching along another train of thought which, as he grew stronger, more and more closely occupied him--inquiry relative to his own condition. He had had a shot at life. He had cast aside every bond, every scruple, every fear, every habit, which formerly--as he had thought--had tied him up in misery. That phase was over. It attracted no more. He had longed to do it; he had done it. What profit? He was very weak. He found that there had passed out of him with the vigour of his body the violent desire to make his body do and feel and suffer. Vigour would return. He would grow stronger. Daily already he was regaining strength. But that desire never would return. It had been exorcised. It had been fulfilled. When he was in London, when he was in all the tumult of that London life, he had thought--God! if only he could break away from it all! break away and rest his mind and bring the labour of living from his head to his hands, from his brain to his body! He had imagined his hands hard, his body sweating, his mind free, and he had thought: "God, God, there, there, could I but get at it, lies, not the labour of living, but the joy of living!" Well, he had got at it. He had done it. Horny and hard he had made his hands; sore and asweat he had wearied his body. What profit? He had wanted to do things--things arduous, reckless, violent. He had done them. What benefit? He had wanted to care for nobody and nothing, to mind nobody's feelings, to have none himself. He had done it. He had wantonly insulted, he had wilfully outraged; he had mastered fear, he had stifled moral consciousness. What virtue? Look back upon it! That which he had desired to do he had done. He had seized the course where labour of living should be made joy of living. He had run it to the uttermost. Mad dog--he had lived, as he had wished to live, a mad dog life, impervious to all sensation, moral or physical. No qualm, no scruple, no thought, no fear had checked him. He had drunk of it full and drunk of it deep. What profit? Soul, soul, look back with me and see where we have come! In the old life never free.