‘No, why should it? Better she were dead — she’ll be much more real. She’ll be positive in death. In life she was a fretting, negated thing.’

‘You are rather horrible,’ murmured Ursula.

‘No! I’d rather Diana Crich were dead. Her living somehow, was all wrong. As for the young man, poor devil — he’ll find his way out quickly instead of slowly. Death is all right — nothing better.’

‘Yet you don’t want to die,’ she challenged him.

He was silent for a time. Then he said, in a voice that was frightening to her in its change:

‘I should like to be through with it — I should like to be through with the death process.’