WEDGECROFT. [Concealing some uneasiness.] Then I’m glad it’s not to be cut short.  You and your cabinet rank and your disestablishment bill!

      TREBELL starts to enjoy his secret.

TREBELL.  Yes ... our minds have been much relieved within the last half hour, haven’t they?

WEDGECROFT.  I scribbled Horsham a note in a messenger office and sent it as soon as O’Connell had left me.

TREBELL.  He’d be glad to get that.

WEDGECROFT.  He has been most kind about the whole thing.

TREBELL.  Oh, he means well.

WEDGECROFT. [Following up his fancied advantage.] But, my friend ... suicide whilst of unsound mind would never have done....  The hackneyed verdict hits the truth, you know.

TREBELL.  You think so?

WEDGECROFT.  I don’t say there aren’t excuses enough in this miserable world, but fundamentally ... no sane person will destroy life.

TREBELL. [His thoughts shifting their plane.] Was she so very mad?  I’m not thinking of her own death.

WEDGECROFT.  Don’t brood, Trebell.  Your mind isn’t healthy yet about her and—­

TREBELL.  And my child.

      Even WEDGECROFT’S kindness is at fault before the solemnity of
      this.

WEDGECROFT.  Is that how you’re thinking of it?

TREBELL.  How else?  It’s very inexplicable ... this sense of fatherhood. [The eyes of his mind travel down—­what vista of possibilities.  Then he shakes himself free.] Let’s drop the subject.  To finish the list of shortcomings, you’re a bit of an artist too ... therefore I don’t think you’ll understand.

WEDGECROFT. [Successfully decoyed into argument.] Surely an artist is a man who understands.

TREBELL.  Everything about life, but not life itself.  That’s where art fails a man.

WEDGECROFT.  That’s where everything but living fails a man. [Drifting into introspection himself.] Yes, it’s true.  I can talk cleverly and I’ve written a book ... but I’m barren. [Then the healthy mind re-asserts itself.] No, it’s not true.  Our thoughts are children ... and marry and intermarry.  And we’re peopling the world ... not badly.

TREBELL.  Well ... either life is too little a thing to matter or it’s so big that such specks of it as we may be are of no account.  These are two points of view.  And then one has to consider if death can’t be sometimes the last use made of life.

      There is a tone of menace in this which recalls WEDGECROFT to the
      present trouble.

WEDGECROFT.  I doubt the virtue of sacrifice ... or the use of it.

TREBELL.  How else could I tell Horsham that my work matters?  Does he think so now?... not he.

WEDGECROFT.  You mean if they’d had to throw you over?

      Once again TREBELL looks up with that secretive smile.