‘First of all, he tells you the easiest way of dying, and then informs you that it ends all your troubles. He is too cunning to say in so many words that there is no hereafter, but what else can he wish you to understand when he says that in dying we have the advantage over the evil spirits, who cannot by death get rid of their sufferings? I will read this book,’ he added, closing it and putting it in his pocket. ‘I wish you would,’ I said: ‘for although I confess you are logically right in your conclusions, I know Sir Thomas did not mean anything of the sort. He was only misled by his love of antithesis into a hasty and illogical remark. The whole tone of his book is against such a conclusion. Besides, I do not doubt he was thinking only of good people, for whom he believed all suffering over at their death.’ ‘But I don’t see, supposing he does believe in immortality, why you should be so anxious about his orthodoxy on the other point. Didn’t Dr Donne, as good a man as any, I presume, argue on the part of the suicide?’ ‘I have not read Dr Donne’s essay, but I suspect the obliquity of it has been much exaggerated.’ ‘Why should you? I never saw any argument worth the name on the other side. We have plenty of expressions of horror--but those are not argument. Indeed, the mass of the vulgar are so afraid of dying that, apparently in terror lest suicide should prove infectious, they treat in a brutal manner the remains of the man who has only had the courage to free himself from a burden too hard for him to bear. It is all selfishness--nothing else. They love their paltry selves so much that they count it a greater sin to kill oneself than to kill another man--which seems to me absolutely devilish. Therefore, the _vox populi_, whether it be the _vox Dei_ or not, is not nonsense merely, but absolute wickedness. Why shouldn’t a man kill himself?’ Clara was looking on rather than listening, and her interest seemed that of amusement only. Mary’s eyes were wide-fixed on the face of Charley, evidently tortured to find that to the other enormities of his unbelief was to be added the justification of suicide. His habit of arguing was doubtless well enough known to her to leave room for the mitigating possibility that he might be arguing only for argument’s sake, but what he said could not but be shocking to her upon any supposition. I was not ready with an answer. Clara was the first to speak. ‘It’s a cowardly thing, anyhow,’ she said. ‘How do you make that out, Miss Clara?’ asked Charley. ‘I’m aware it’s the general opinion, but I don’t see it myself.’ ‘It’s surely cowardly to run away in that fashion.’ ‘For my part,’ returned Charley, ‘I feel that it requires more courage than _I_‘ve got, and hence it comes, I suppose, that I admire any one who has the pluck.’ ‘What vulgar words you use, Mr Charles!’ said Clara.