omes on soft velvet paws to
devour. Stay! oh, bland and beautiful night, thou that dost so
charitably hide our misfortunes, stay!

"I shudder when I think of the new evils and abominations that this
day will bring. The world is still at rest, lying in the partial
purity of sleep. But as a cruel gray beast the day comes on soundless
velvet paws. Light and desire are one; light and desire are the claws
that the gray beast unsheathes; a few hours' oblivion and the world's
torment begins again!" Then looking down the great height, he thought
how he might spring from consciousness into oblivion--the town and
the river were now distinct in ghastly pallor--"I should feel
nothing. But what a mess I should make; what a horrible little mess!"

After breakfast he sat looking into space, wondering what he might
do. He hoped for a visitor, and yet he could not think of one that he
desired to see. A woman! the very thought was distasteful. He rose
and went to the window. London implacable lay before him, a morose
mass of brick, fitting sign and symbol of life. And the few hours
that lay between breakfast and dinner were narrow and brick-coloured;
and longing for the vast green hours of the country, he went to
Belthorpe Park. But in a few weeks the downs and lanes fevered and
exasperated him, and perforce he must seek some new distraction.
Henceforth he hurried from house to house, tiring of each last abode
more rapidly than the one that had preceded it. He read no books, and
he only bought newspapers to read the accounts of suicides; and his
friends had begun to notice the strange interest with which he spoke
of those who had done away with themselves, and the persistency with
which he sought to deduce their motives from the evidence; and he
seemed to be animated by a wish to depreciate all worldly reasons,
and to rely upon weariness of life as sufficient motive for their
action.

The account of two young people engaged to be married, who had taken
tickets for some short journey and shot themselves in the railway
carriage. "Here," he said, "was a case of absolute sanity, a quality
almost undiscoverable in human nature. Two young people resolve to
rid themselves of the burden; but they are more than utilitarians,
they are poets, and of a high order; for, not only do they make most
public and emphatic denial of life, but they add to it a measure of
Aristophanesque satire--they engage themselves to marry. Now marriage
is man's appro