Not an actual yes, but
encouraging! She's away in the Channel Islands, and I wrote--'
He talked on for a quarter of an hour. Then, with a sudden
movement, the listener freed himself.
'I can't go any farther,' he said hoarsely. 'Good-bye!'
Whelpdale was disconcerted.
'I have been boring you. That's a confounded fault of mine; I
know it.'
Biffen had waved his hand, and was gone.
A week or two more would see him at the end of his money. He had
no lessons now, and could not write; from his novel nothing was
to be expected. He might apply again to his brother, but such
dependence was unjust and unworthy. And why should he struggle to
preserve a life which had no prospect but of misery?
It was in the hours following his encounter with Whelpdale that
he first knew the actual desire of death, the simple longing for
extinction. One must go far in suffering before the innate will-
to-live is thus truly overcome; weariness of bodily anguish may
induce this perversion of the instincts; less often, that despair
of suppressed emotion which had fallen upon Harold.
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