“If we had had a child, it might have been different.  I might have liked to go on living for his sake.  But Humanity, somehow—­Oh!  Oliver!  I can’t—­I can’t.

“I know I am wrong, and that you are right—­but there it is; I cannot change myself.  So I am quite sure that I must go.

“Then I want to tell you this—­that I am not at all frightened.  I never can understand why people are—­unless, of course, they are Christians.  I should be horribly frightened if I was one of them.  But, you see, we both know that there is nothing beyond.  It is life that I am frightened of—­not death.  Of course, I should be frightened if there was any pain; but the doctors tell me there is absolutely none.  It is simply going to sleep.  The nerves are dead before the brain.  I am going to do it myself.  I don’t want any one else in the room.  In a few minutes the nurse here—­Sister Anne, with whom I have made great friends—­will bring in the thing, and then she will leave me.

“As regards what happens afterwards, I do not mind at all.  Please do exactly what you wish.  The cremation will take place to-morrow morning at noon, so that you can be here if you like.  Or you can send directions, and they will send on the urn to you.  I know you liked to have your mother’s urn in the garden; so perhaps you will like mine.  Please do exactly what you like.  And with all my things too.  Of course I leave them to you.

“Now, my dear, I want to say this—­that I am very sorry indeed now that I was so tiresome and stupid.  I think I did really believe your arguments all along.  But I did not want to believe them.  Do you see now why I was so tiresome?

“Oliver, my darling, you have been extraordinarily good to me....  Yes, I know I am crying, but I am really very happy.  This is such a lovely ending.  I wish I hadn’t been obliged to make you so anxious during this last week:  but I had to—­I knew you would persuade me against it, if you found me, and that would have been worse than ever.  I am sorry I told you that lie, too.  Indeed, it is the first I ever did tell you.

“Well, I don’t think there is much more to say.  Oliver, my dear, good-bye.  I send you my love with all my heart.

“MABEL.”

* * * * *

She sat still when she had read it through, and her eyes were still wet with tears.  Yet it was all perfectly true.  She was far happier than she could be if she had still the prospect of going back.  Life seemed entirely blank:  death was so obvious an escape; her soul ached for it, as a body for sleep.

She directed the envelope, still with a perfectly steady hand, laid it on the table, and leaned back once more, glancing again at her untasted breakfast.

Then she suddenly began to think of her conversation with Mr. Francis; and, by a strange association of ideas, remembered the fall of the volor in Brighton, the busy-ness of the priest, and the Euthanasia boxes....