The Count rose from his chair: his eyes shone.

‘I have the greatest pleasure in accepting your generous proposal,’ he replied, ‘more especially as I am quite convinced that no one could study this question for nine hours without answering it as I myself have been taught to answer it. As for the method of study, that of course must be left to yourself. The “Phaidon” of Plato’—

‘No,’ I said carelessly, moving away from the door to let him pass. ‘My tastes are not philosophical. I shall sit by the fire for three hours, and think it over in my own way. (I dare not engage that my mind will not wander to other subjects. La Girouette danced adorably in the ballet last night.) Then, if you have no objection, I shall dine out and go to a ball, the invitation for which I accepted some time ago, so that my absence would be remarked: and, when the clock strikes eleven, I shall betake myself to my confessor. If serious reflection, if the sight of the vanities of this world, if the consolation of religion, all put together, cannot persuade me to believe in the immortality of the soul, it will be a hopeless affair indeed; for I am sure nothing else could.’

The Count sighed.

‘It is a strange way to take,’ he said; ‘but let no man judge for another. I myself was led to believe by a series of events which, to any other than myself, would appear almost incredible. I pray that you may be rightly directed. In the meantime I wish you good-night. I shall not retire to rest before two o’clock.’ He bowed again and went out.

When he was gone I threw myself down in the chair which he had occupied, that I might enjoy to the full the luxury of being alone. The Count’s presence had become a hideous oppression to me during the last quarter of an hour. I had felt as if he would never go—as if he were a nightmare, as if he were the Old Man of the Sea, as if he were a whole crowd of people in himself, and made the room stuffy. I ran to the window and flung it open; the wind rushed in and puffed the curtains out, and rioted amongst my books and papers, bathing me, body and soul, in freedom. I heaped up faggot after faggot, and stirred them into a blaze that might have set the chimney on fire. Then, between wind and flame, down I sat, according to contract, to consider that part of myself which was more subtle than either.

I found it to the full as difficult as I had expected. The old arguments were no newer. ‘We should like to go on living very much. Therefore we think we shall. But as we really do not know, we will not die till the last possible moment.’ They came to little more than that, so it seemed. As I was without this strong prepossession in favour of life, I failed to recognize their cogency. Besides, to have that man going on for ever? I had a strong prepossession in favour of his extinction, even if it necessarily included my own. I loved myself less than I hated him. Not that I had any reason to hate him. He was everything that he should be, which gave a sort of zest to my abhorrence, reduced it to a fine art—made it essential, not a mere accident. Our natures were antagonistic. I could have forgiven another for murdering me more easily than I could forgive him the fact of his existence in the same universe with myself. He jarred upon my every nerve. My eyes rebelled at the sight of his face, my ears at the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand caused an electric shiver of repulsion. He annihilated all but the animal part of me; when he was in the room I knew his dog had more of a soul than I. And, by the strangest freak of fancy, it was this man who, more than any one I ever met, had the faculty of conjuring anything like it out of me, who insisted not only on my believing it was there, but that it would go on being there for ever and ever.

‘No, Count,’ I said, as I watched the sparks go up the chimney; ‘keep your immortality to yourself! I would not share it with you for the asking,’ and through my mind there flashed the old emblems of the transitoriness of life—the dream, the shadow, the morning mist, the snowflake, the flower of the grass, the bird flying out of the darkness, through the lighted hall, into the darkness again. I was reassured concerning its momentary character. ‘And yet,’ I said to myself, ‘the Count has a very strong will. If any man had the power to insist on living, in defiance of all the rules of Nature, that man would be the Count. Perhaps it