"Why should we shock people?"
"But it's bound to shock people."
"No, that's a popular fallacy. If I hear a stranger in the street saying that some one, a stranger to us both, took his life a little while ago in the opposite house, I am slightly disturbed, perhaps, at having the mask men wear pushed away for a moment; but I continue my walk, I eat my dinner as usual."
"How shall it be, then, so that our friends shall continue their walks and eat their dinners?"
"Somewhere a long way from here—"
"Yes, yes; we'll go to the Far East—we'll go to the end of the world."
"Yes, to the end of the world."
"And then it will be quite easy, when we've come to the end, just to step off."
"Quite easy."
Val busied herself unceasingly in the preparations for going the long journey. Ethan looked on at her calmness and activity with growing wonder. His first sense of revolt and horror was little by little merged in mere incredulity, then rank suspicion.