It was indeed wonderful how, with the self-respect and sense of propriety of the British housekeeper, the lady had within a few minutes adorned the central table with a snow-white cloth, laid the napkins upon it, and set forth the simple meal with all the elegance of civilization, including an electric torch lamp in the centre.  Wonderful also was it to find that our appetites were ravenous.

“It is the measure of our emotion,” said Challenger with that air of condescension with which he brought his scientific mind to the explanation of humble facts.  “We have gone through a great crisis.  That means molecular disturbance.  That in turn means the need for repair.  Great sorrow or great joy should bring intense hunger—­not abstinence from food, as our novelists will have it.”

“That’s why the country folk have great feasts at funerals,” I hazarded.

“Exactly.  Our young friend has hit upon an excellent illustration.  Let me give you another slice of tongue.”

“The same with savages,” said Lord John, cutting away at the beef.  “I’ve seen them buryin’ a chief up the Aruwimi River, and they ate a hippo that must have weighed as much as a tribe.  There are some of them down New Guinea way that eat the late-lamented himself, just by way of a last tidy up.  Well, of all the funeral feasts on this earth, I suppose the one we are takin’ is the queerest.”

“The strange thing is,” said Mrs. Challenger, “that I find it impossible to feel grief for those who are gone.  There are my father and mother at Bedford.  I know that they are dead, and yet in this tremendous universal tragedy I can feel no sharp sorrow for any individuals, even for them.”

“And my old mother in her cottage in Ireland,” said I.  “I can see her in my mind’s eye, with her shawl and her lace cap, lying back with closed eyes in the old high-backed chair near the window, her glasses and her book beside her.  Why should I mourn. her?  She has passed and I am passing, and I may be nearer her in some other life than England is to Ireland.  Yet I grieve to think that that dear body is no more.”

“As to the body,” remarked Challenger, “we do not mourn over the parings of our nails nor the cut locks of our hair, though they were once part of ourselves.  Neither does a one-legged man yearn sentimentally over his missing member.  The physical body has rather been a source of pain and fatigue to us.  It is the constant index of our limitations.  Why then should we worry about its detachment from our psychical selves?”

“If they can indeed be detached,” Summerlee grumbled.  “But, anyhow, universal death is dreadful.”

“As I have already explained,” said Challenger, “a universal death must in its nature be far less terrible than a isolated one.”

“Same in a battle,” remarked Lord John.  “If you saw a single man lying on that floor with his chest knocked in and a hole in his face it would turn you sick.  But I’ve seen ten thousand on their backs in the Soudan, and it gave me no such feelin’, for when you are makin’ history the life of any man is too small a thing to worry over.  When a thousand million pass over together, same as happened to-day, you can’t pick your own partic’lar out of the crowd.”