at the watch, tore it and the
chain from Ravengar's waistcoat, dashed them to the floor, and stamped
on them. He was amazed, and he was also delighted, at his own fury. The
lust of destruction had got hold of him.

'Ass!' he murmured, suddenly lowering his voice. 'Can't you guess what I
mean to do?'

'I cannot,' Ravengar stammered.

'I mean to put you to the same test to which you put me. You arranged
that I should spend twenty-two hours in a vault without ventilation. At
the end of five hours I was by no means dead. I might have survived the
twenty-two. But, frankly, I don't fancy I should. And I don't fancy you
will. In fact, I'm convinced that you won't.'

'Indeed!' said Ravengar uncertainly.

'You think this scene is not real,' Hugo continued. 'You think it can't
be real. You refuse to credit the fact that this time to-morrow you will
be dead. You refuse to admit to yourself that I am in earnest--deadly,
fatal earnest.'

'Upon my soul!' Ravengar burst out, standing, 'I believe you are.'

'Good,' said Hugo. 'You are waking up, positively. You are getting
accustomed to the unpleasant prospect of not dying in your bed
surrounded by inconsolable dependants.'

'Hugo,' Ravengar began persuasively, 'you must be aware that all these
suspicions of yours are a figment of your excited brain. You must be
aware that I never meant to murder you.'

'My dear fellow,' Hugo replied with calm bitterness, '_I_ don't intend
to murder _you_. I intend merely to put you in that vault. Your death
will be an accidental consequence, as mine would have been. And why
should you not die? Can you give me a single good reason why you should
continue to live? What good are you doing on the earth? Are you making
anyone happy? Are you making yourself happy? That spark of vitality
which constitutes your soul has chanced on an unfortunate incarnation.
Suppose that I release it, and give it a fresh opportunity, shall I not
be acting worthily? For you must agree that murder in the strict sense
is an impossible thing. The immortal cannot die. Vital energy cannot be
destroyed. All that the murderer does is to end one incarnation and
begin another.'

'So that is your theory!'

'Was it not yours, when you got me deposited in the vault?' Hugo
demanded with ferocious irony. 'I am bound to believe that it was. The
common outcry against murder (as it is called) can have no weight with
enlightened persons like you and me, Ravengar.'

'Perhaps not,