‘Everybody might be—if everybody would take the consequences. That is the stumbling-block—the lack of an ounce of determination and a drachm of courage.’
‘Paradoxes!’ exclaimed Greif. ‘Life is a more serious matter—’
‘Than death? Certainly.’ Rex laughed.
‘I did not say that,’ returned Greif gravely. ‘Death is the most serious of all earthly matters. No one can laugh at it.’
‘Then I am alone in the world. I laugh at it. Serious? Why, it is the affair of a moment compared with a lifetime of enjoyment!’
‘And what may come afterwards does not disturb you?’
‘Why should it? Is there any sense in being made miserable by the concoctions of other people’s hysterical imagination?’
Greif was silent. He was young enough and simple enough to be shocked by Rex’s indifference and unbelief, and yet the man exercised an influence over him which he felt and did not resent. Phrases which would have sounded shallow in the mouth of a Korps student, discussing the immortality of the soul over his twentieth measure of beer, produced a very different impression when they fell from the lips of the sober astronomer with the strange eyes. Greif felt uncomfortable, and yet he knew that he would certainly seek the society of Rex again at no distant date. At present all his ideas were unsettled, and after a moment’s silence he rose to go.
‘Do not forget your telegram,’ said Rex, handing it to him.
‘Shall you go to the philosophy lecture to-morrow?’ asked Greif as he reached the door.