r, all will and dignity gone from
you, never to enter there again?--there, where all the little human
things you have loved, and used, and lived amongst, are lying just as
you left them--the book you laid down, the coat you wore--now all of a
greater worth than you. You are mere dead flesh, and behind the horrid
lid lie stark and cold, with rigid fingers and half-closed eyes, and
the chief desire of every one, even of those you have loved most, is to
be rid of you, to be out of reach of sight and smell of you. And so,
after being carted, and jolted, and unloaded, you will be thrown into a
hole, and your body, ice-cold, and as yielding as meat to the
touch--oh, that awful icy softness!--your flesh will begin to rot, to
be such that not your nearest friend would touch you. God, it is
unbearable!"

He wiped his forehead, and Maurice was silent, not knowing what to say;
he felt that such rational arguments as he might be able to offer,
would have little value in the face of this intensely personal view,
which was stammered forth with the bitterness of an accusation. But as
they crossed the suspension bridge, Krafft stopped, and stood looking
at the water, which glistened in the moonlight like a living thing.

"No, it is impossible for me to put death out of my mind," he went on.
"And yet, a spring into this silver fire down here would end all that,
and satisfy one's curiosity as well. Why is one not readier to make the
spring?--and what would one's sensations be? The mad rush through the
air--the crash--the sinking in the awful blackness ..."

"Those of fear and cold. You would wish yourself out again," answered
Maurice; and as Krafft nodded, without seeming to resent his tone, he
ventured to put forward a few points for the other side of the
question. He suggested that always to be brooding over death unfitted
you for life. Every one had to die when his time came; it was foolish
to look upon your own death as an exception to the rule. Besides, when
sensation had left you--the soul, the spirit, whatever you liked to
call it--what did it matter what afterwards became of your body? It
was, then, in reality, nothing but lumber, fresh nourishment for the
soil; and it was morbid to care so much how it was treated, just
because it had once been your tenement, when it was now as worthless as
the crab's empty shell.

He stuttered this out piece-wise, in his halting German; then paused,
not sure how his companion would take the