It was in this room he had seen Lady Helen for the last time; and he remembered how, when he returned to her, after having taken Lily back to the dancing-room, he had found her reading a letter, and almost the very words of the conversation it had given rise to came back to him, and her almost aggressive despair.  No one could say why she had shot herself.  Who was the man that had deserted her?  What was he like?  Was it Harding?  It was certainly for a lover who had tired of her; and Mike wondered how it were possible to weary of one so beautiful and so interesting, and he believed that if she had loved him they both would have found content.

“Do you remember, Harding, that it was in this room we saw Lady Helen alive for the last time?  What a tragedy that was!  Do you remember the room in the Alexandra Hotel, the firelight, with the summer morning coming through the Venetian blinds?  Somehow there was a sense of sculpture, even without the beautiful body.  Seven years have passed.  She has enjoyed seven years of peace and rest; we have endured seven years of fret and worry.  Life of course was never worth living, but the common stupidity of the nineteenth century renders existence for those who may see into the heart of things almost unbearable.  I confess that every day man’s stupidity seems to me more and more miraculous.  Indeed it may be said to be divine, so inherent and so unalterable is it; and to understand it we need not stray from the question in hand—­suicide.  A man is houseless, he is old, he is friendless, he is starving, he is assailed in every joint by cruel disease; to save himself from years of suffering he lights a pan of charcoal; and, after carefully considering all the circumstances, the jury returns a verdict of suicide while in a state of temporary insanity.  Out of years of insanity had sprung a supreme moment of sanity, and no one understands it.  The common stupidity, I should say the common insanity, of the world on the subject of suicide is quite comic.  A man may destroy his own property, which would certainly be of use to some one, but he may not destroy his own life, which possibly is of use to no one; and if two men conspire to commit suicide and one fails, the other is tried for murder and hanged.  Can the mind conceive more perfect nonsense?”

“I cannot say I agree with you,” said Harding; “man’s aversion to suicide seems to me perfectly comprehensible.”

“Does it really!  Well, I should like to hear you develop that paradox.”

“Your contention is that it is inconceivable that in an already over-crowded society men should not look rather with admiration than with contempt on those who, convinced that they block the way, surrender their places to those better able to fill them; and it is to you equally inconceivable that a man should be allowed to destroy his property and not his person.  Your difficulty seems to me to arise from your not taking into consideration the instinctive nature of