“Tolerably,” said Chelifer, with precision.
“And Miss Elver?” he addressed himself politely to Mr. Cardan.
Mr. Cardan looked up at him. “Hadn’t you heard?” he asked.
“Heard what?”
“She’s dead.” Mr. Cardan’s face became all at once very hard and still.
“I’m sorry,” said Calamy. “I didn’t know.” He thought it more tactful to proffer no further condolences. There was a silence.
“That’s something,” said Mr. Cardan at last, “that you’ll find it rather difficult to contemplate away, however long and mystically you stare at your navel.”
“What?” asked Calamy.
“Death,” Mr. Cardan answered. “You can’t get over the fact that, at the end of everything, the flesh gets hold of the spirit, and squeezes the life out of it, so that a man turns into something that’s no better than a whining sick animal. And as the flesh sickens the spirit sickens, manifestly. Finally the flesh dies and putrefies; and the spirit presumably putrefies too. And there’s an end of your omphaloskepsis, with all its by-products, God and justice and salvation and all the rest of them.”
“Perhaps it is,” said Calamy. “Let’s admit it as certain, even. I don’t see that it makes the slightest difference.…”