en proven; and
there remained, therefore, only one event of any sporting interest to
the world.... He was a very interesting man--my father. He did not
believe in death.... And I do not.... This sloughing off of the material
integument seems to me purely a matter of the mechanical routine of
evolution, a natural process in further and inevitable development, not
a finality to individualism!... Fertilisation, gestation, the hatching,
growth, the episodic deliverance from encasing matter which is called
death, seem to me only the first few basic steps in the sequences of an
endless metamorphosis.... My father thought so. His was a very fine
mind--_is_ a finer mind still.... Will you understand me if I say that
we often communicate with each other--my father and I?"

"Communicate?" repeated Hamil.

"Often."

Hamil said slowly: "I don't think I understand."

Malcourt looked at him, the ever-latent mockery flickering in his eyes;
then, by degrees, his head bent forward in the old half-cunning,
half-wistful attitude as though listening. A vague smile touched the
pallor of his face, and he presently looked up with something of his old
debonair impudence.

"The truly good are always so interested in creating hell for the
wicked," he said, "that sometimes the good get into the pit themselves
just to see how hot it really is. And find the wicked have never been
there.... Hamil, the hopelessly wicked--and there are few of them who
are not mentally irresponsible--never go to hell because they wouldn't
mind it if they did. It's the good who are hell's architects and often
its tenants.... I'm speaking of all prisoners of conscience. The wicked
have none."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"There's always an exit from one of these temporary little pits of
torment," he said; "when one finds it too oppressive in the shade....
When one obtains a proper perspective, and retains one's sense of
humour, and enough of conscience to understand the crime of losing
time.... And when, in correct perspective, one realises the fictitious
value of that temporary phase called the human unit, and when one cuts
free from the absurd dogma concerning the dignity and the sanctity of
that human unit.... I'm keeping you from your cigar and arm-chair and
from Portlaw.... A good, kindly gossip, who fed my belly and filled my
purse and loved me for the cards I played. I'm a yellow pup to mock him.
I'm a pup anyhow.... But, Hamil, there is, in the worst pup