sent you would not be legally an
accomplice in my _felo de se_. Themis is a colossal Meddlesome Matty
with her fingers in every pie."

"Bother Themis! What a lot of nonsense! However, there was one gleam of
reason. You are alive to the fact that I should not consent to your
suicide. Or anyone else's. _I_ think it's wrong to kill oneself."

"So do I. But it might be a luxury I should not deny myself under some
circumstances. I don't know that Hamlet would influence me. A certain
amount of nervousness about Eternity is inseparable from our want of
authentic information. I should hope for a healthy and effectual
extinction. Failing that, I should disclaim all responsibility. I should
point out that it lay, not with me, but my Maker. I should dwell on the
fact that Creators that make Hereafters are alone answerable for the
consequences; that I had never been consulted as to my own wishes about
birth and parentage; and that I should be equally contented to be
annulled, and, as Mrs. Bailey would have said, ill-convenience
nobody...."

"Do you know why I am letting you go on?"

"Because of my Religious Tone? Because of my Good Taste? Or why?"

"Because I sometimes suspect you of being in earnest about suicide."

"I am quite in earnest."

"Very well, then. Now attend to me. I'm going to insist on your making
me a promise."

"Then I shall have to make it. But I don't know till I hear it whether I
shall promise to keep it."

"That's included."

"But no promise to keep my promise to keep it's included."

"Yes it is. If you keep on, I shall keep on. So you had better stop.
What you've got to promise is not to commit suicide under any
circumstances whatever."

"Not under any circumstances whatever? That seems to me rather harsh and
arbitrary."

"Not at all. Give me your promise."

"H'm--well!--I'm an amiable, tractable sort of cove.... But I think I am
entitled to one little reservation."

"It must be a very little one."

"Anything one gives one's _fiancee_ is returned when she breaks one off.
When you break me off I shall consider the promise given
back--cancelled."

"Ye-es! Perhaps that _is_ fair, on the whole. Only I think I deserve a
small consideration for allowing it."

"I can't refuse to hear what it is."

"Give me that little bottle of Indian poison. To take care of for you,
you know. I'll give it back if I break you off. Honour bright!"

"I shouldn't want it till then, probably. And if I did, I co