WEDGECROFT. I'm a doctor, my friend. TREBELL. You're a part of our tendency to keep things alive by hook or by crook . . not a spark but must be carefully blown upon. The world's old and tired; it dreads extinction. I think I disapprove . . I think I've more faith. WEDGECROFT. [_Scolding him._] Nonsense . . you've the instinct to preserve your life as everyone else has . . and I'm here to show you how. TREBELL. [_Beyond the reach of his kindness._] I assure you that these two days while you've been fussing around O'Connell--bless your kind heart--I've been waiting events, indifferent enough to understand his indifference. WEDGECROFT. Not indifferent. TREBELL. Lifeless enough already, then. [_Suddenly a thought strikes him._] D'you think it was Horsham and his little committee persuaded O'Connell? WEDGECROFT. On the contrary. TREBELL. So you need not have let them into the secret? WEDGECROFT. No. TREBELL. Think of that. _He almost laughs; but_ WEDGECROFT _goes on quite innocently_. WEDGECROFT. Yes . . I'm sorry. TREBELL. Upsetting their moral digestion for nothing. WEDGECROFT. But when O'Connell wouldn't listen to us we had to rope in the important people. TREBELL. With their united wisdom. [_Then he breaks away again into great bitterness._] No . . what do they make of this woman's death? I saw them in that room, Gilbert, like men seen through the wrong end of a telescope. D'you think if the little affair with Nature . . her offence and mine against the conveniences of civilization . . had ended in my death too . . then they'd have stopped to wonder at the misuse and waste of the only force there is in the world . . come to think of it, there is no other . . than this desire for expression . . in words . . or through children. Would they have thought of that and stopped whispering about the scandal? _Through this_ WEDGECROFT _has watched him very gravely_. WEDGECROFT. Trebell . . if the inquest to-morrow had put you out of action . . TREBELL. Should I have grown a beard and travelled abroad and after ten years timidly tried to climb my way back into politics? When public opinion takes its heel from your face it keeps it for your finger-tips. After twenty years to be forgiven by your more broad-minded friends and tolerated as a dotard by a new generation. . . WEDGECROFT. Nonsense. What age are you now . . forty-six . . forty-seven? TREBELL. Well . . let's instance a good man. Gladstone had done his best work by sixty-five. Then he began to be popular. Think of his last years of oratory. _He has gone to his table and now very methodically starts to tidy his papers_, WEDGECROFT _still watching him_. WEDGECROFT. You'd have had to thank Heaven for a little that there were more lives than one to lead.