He rose from his chair, and went to the edge of the verandah, stretching his arms wide and breathing deeply of the warm, fragrant air. Then he turned again to his companion.
"That, too, I hope is what death will be like," he said. "All the sunlight of life will be concentrated into that moment, until one's mere body can hold no more of the glow that impregnates it, and is shattered. Look at those clusters of rambler; a little more and they must burst with the colour."
"Don't be so uncomfortable, Tom," he cried, in a sort of boyish petulance. "I could go mad when I think of death. It is horrible, frightening. I don't want to die, and I don't want to get old. I want to be young always, to feel as I feel to-day, and never a jot less keenly. That's what you must tell me while I am here; how am I to remain young? You seem to have solved it; you are much younger than when I knew you first."
"And another proof of my youth is that I feel as I do about death," he said. "The more you are conscious of your own life, the more absurd the notion that one can die becomes. Why, even one's body won't die; it will make life, it will be grass on one's grave, just as the dead leaves that fall from the tree make the leaf-mould which feeds that tree or another tree or the grass. It doesn't in the least matter which, it is all one, it is all life."
"Yes, quite true, and not the least consoling," he said; "for what is the use of being alive if one loses one's individuality? It doesn't make death the least less terrible to me, even if I know that I am going to become a piece of groundsel and be pecked at by your canary. I don't want to be groundsel, I don't want to be pecked at, and I don't want to become your canary. Great heavens, fancy being a bit of a canary!"
"Ah, but only your body," said the other.
"Yes, and what happens to the rest? You tell me that a piece of me, for my body is a piece of me, becomes a canary, and you don't know about the rest. Indeed it is not a cheerful prospect. If some--some bird pecks my eyes out, is it a consolation to me, who becomes blind, to learn that a bird has had dinner?"
Merivale looked at him; even as Gladys had seen that some change had come in Madge, so he saw that something had happened to Evelyn, and he registered that impression in his mind. But the change, whatever it was, was not permanent--it was a phase, a mood only, for next moment Evelyn had broken out into a perfectly natural laugh.
