“We hid in a cave,” said Mr. Cardan. He looked round at the view. “Pretty good,” he said encouragingly, as though it were Calamy who had made the landscape, “pretty good, I must say.” “Agreeably Wordsworthian,” said Chelifer in his precise voice. “And where do you live?” asked Mr. Cardan. Calamy pointed to the cottage. Mr. Cardan nodded comprehendingly. “Hearts of gold, but a little niffy, eh?” he asked, lifting his raised white eyebrow still higher. “Not to speak of,” said Calamy. “Charming girls?” Mr. Cardan went on. “Or goitres?” “Neither,” said Calamy. “And how long do you propose to stay?” “I haven’t the faintest idea.” “Till you’ve got to the bottom of the cosmos, eh?” Calamy smiled. “That’s about it.” “Splendid,” said Mr. Cardan, patting him on the arm, “splendid. I envy you. God, what wouldn’t I give to be your age? What wouldn’t I give?” He shook his head sadly. “And, alas,” he added, “what could I give, in point of actual fact? I put it at about twelve hundred quid at the present time. My total fortune. Shouldn’t we sit down?” he added on another note. Calamy led the way down the little path. Along the front of the cottage, under the windows, ran a long bench. The three men sat down. The sun shone full upon them; it was pleasantly warm. Beneath them was the narrow valley with its smoky shadows; opposite, the black hills, cloud-capped and silhouetted against the brightness of the sky about the sun. “And the trip to Rome,” Calamy inquired, “was that agreeable?” “Tolerably,” said Chelifer, with precision. “And Miss Elver?” he addressed himself politely to Mr. Cardan. Mr. Cardan looked up at him. “Hadn’t you heard?” he asked. “Heard what?” “She’s dead.” Mr. Cardan’s face became all at once very hard and still. “I’m sorry,” said Calamy. “I didn’t know.” He thought it more tactful to proffer no further condolences. There was a silence. “That’s something,” said Mr. Cardan at last, “that you’ll find it rather difficult to contemplate away, however long and mystically you stare at your navel.” “What?” asked Calamy. “Death,” Mr. Cardan answered. “You can’t get over the fact that, at the end of everything, the flesh gets hold of the spirit, and squeezes the life out of it, so that a man turns into something that’s no better than a whining sick animal. And as the flesh sickens the spirit sickens, manifestly. Finally the flesh dies and putrefies; and the spirit presumably putrefies too. And there’s an end of your omphaloskepsis, with all its by-products, God and justice and salvation and all the rest of them.” “Perhaps it is,” said Calamy. “Let’s admit it as certain, even. I don’t see that it makes the slightest difference....” “No difference?”