And then he began to worry about other things. Things that had, as he put it, “happened” in his youth, before he knew Elizabeth, and one thing that had happened after she left him. He thought of them as just happening; happening _to_ him rather than _through_ him, against his will. In calm, philosophic moments he couldn’t conceive how they had ever happened at all, how, for example, he could have endured Connie Larkins. The episodes had been brief, because in each case boredom and disgust had supervened to put asunder what Mr. Spalding owned should never have been joined. Brief, insignificant as they were, Mr. Spalding, in his dying state, was worried when he looked back on them. Supposing they were more significant than they had seemed? Supposing they had an eternal significance and entailed tremendous consequences in the after-life? Supposing you were not just wiped out, that there really _was_ an after-life? Supposing that in that other world there was a hell? Mr. Spalding could imagine no worse hell than the eternal repetition of such incidents; eternal repetition of boredom and disgust. Fancy going on with Connie Larkins for ever and ever, never being able to get away from her, doomed to repeat—And, if there _was_ an Absolute, if there was reality, truth, never knowing it; being cut off from it for ever— “He that is filthy let him be filthy still.” That was hell, the continuance of the filthy state. He wondered whether goodness was not, after all, _the_ important thing; he wondered whether there really was a next world; with an extreme uneasiness he wondered what would happen to him in it. He died wondering. II His first thought was: Well, here I am again. I’ve not been wiped out. His next, that he hadn’t died at all. He had gone to sleep and was now dreaming. He was not in the least agitated, nor even surprised. He found himself alone in an immense grey space, in which there was no distinguishable object but himself. He was aware of his body as occupying a portion of this space. For he had a body; a curious, tenuous, whitish body. The odd thing was that this empty space had a sort of solidity under him. He was lying on it, stretched out on it, adrift. It supported him with the buoyancy of deep water. And yet his body was part of it, netted in. He was now aware of two figures approaching. They came and stood, like figures treading water, one on each side of him, and he saw that they were Elizabeth and Paul Jeffreson. Then he concluded that he was really dead; dead like Elizabeth and Jeffreson, and (since they were there) that he was in hell. Elizabeth was speaking, and her voice sounded sweet and very kind. All the same he knew he was in hell. “It’s all right,” she said. “It’s queer at first, but you’ll get used to it. You don’t mind our coming to meet you?”