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. TREBELL. That's another of your faults, Gilbert ... it's a comfort just now to enumerate them. You're an anarchist ... a kingdom to yourself. You make little treaties with Truth and with Beauty, and what can disturb you? I'm a part of the machine I believe in. If my life as I've made it is to be cut short ... the rest of me shall walk out of the world and slam the door ... with the noise of a pistol shot. WEDGECROFT. [_Concealing some uneasiness._] Then I'm glad it's not to be cut short. You and your cabinet rank and your disestablishment bill! TREBELL _starts to enjoy his secret._ TREBELL. Yes ... our minds have been much relieved within the last half hour, haven't they? WEDGECROFT. I scribbled Horsham a note in a messenger office and sent it as soon as O'Connell had left me. TREBELL. He'd be glad to get that. WEDGECROFT. He has been most kind about the whole thing. TREBELL. Oh, he means well. WEDGECROFT. [_Following up his fancied advantage._] But, my friend ... suicide whilst of unsound mind would never have done.... The hackneyed verdict hits the truth, you know. TREBELL. You think so? WEDGECROFT. I don't say there aren't excuses enough in this miserable world, but fundamentally ... no sane person will destroy life. TREBELL. [_His thoughts shifting their plane._] Was she so very mad? I'm not thinking of her own death. WEDGECROFT. Don't brood, Trebell. Your mind isn't healthy yet about her and-- TREBELL. And my child. _Even_ WEDGECROFT'S _kindness is at fault before the solemnity of this._ WEDGECROFT. Is that how you're thinking of it? TREBELL. How else? It's very inexplicable ... this sense of fatherhood. [_The eyes of his mind travel down--what vista of possibilities. Then he shakes himself free._] Let's drop the subject. To finish the list of shortcomings, you're a bit of an artist too ... therefore I don't think you'll understand. WEDGECROFT. [_Successfully decoyed into argument._] Surely an artist is a man who understands. TREBELL. Everything about life, but not life itself. That's where art fails a man.