"Shadows?"
"Not very dark ones, certainly; but three-fourths of my life are spent in a sort of dull twilight, that is—infinitely melancholy!"
"Whence proceeds that melancholy?"
"I know not. My natural disposition, perhaps. I have everything I can want or wish, yet it sometimes seems to me that there is only one thing to reconcile us to life—"
"What is that?"
"The fear of death."
"Just so," said he, abruptly.
"Can you, a churchman, tell me how to overcome that fear?"
"There is no fear of your dying—"
"Die I must, soon or late! Death comes to all. Can you, a churchman, tell me how to meet it?"