"I hope you won't return here," I replied gravely; "it would be suicidal, and, flattery aside, your life is too valuable to be sacrificed over here."
"Perhaps you are right," he murmured pensively, as though we were discussing a third party whose life interested him only in an impersonal manner, and without exhibiting the slightest self-consciousness or vanity. "It might be better if I stayed at home. I admit," he continued more brightly, "I have a selfish desire to live. I am so young and have seen so little of this great big interesting world and I want so much to know what it all means. Still I would far sooner die than feel myself a slacker or a 'skrimshanker.'"
"No one will mistake you for either," I returned warmly. "Your lungs are not strong, and I fear if you remain here in the cold and wet you will not recover."
"There's so much in life to live for," he cried animatedly; "besides, I'm a little dubious of the after world. For a little longer I should like to learn what tangible pleasures this world offers, rather than tempt the unsubstantiated promises of a future state."
"But surely you believe in an after life?" I enquired, in some surprise.
"It's difficult to believe what one cannot prove," he returned evasively.
"But," I ventured argumentatively, "I can imagine that if the total matter in the universe is indestructible and cannot be added to or taken from, the soul too is indestructible—it may be changed, but cannot be destroyed."
"Ah!" he exclaimed quickly, "you are assuming the reality of the abstract. Suppose I do not agree with your hypothesis, and deny the existence of the soul! You cannot prove me wrong. Sometimes I fear," he continued more softly, "the soul, or what we conceive to be the soul, is merely the reflection of poor Humanity beating its anxious wings against the horror of extinction."
"Or the shadow of a poor physician scuttling away from the terrors of your philosophy," I laughed. "You iconoclasts would pull our castles-in-the-air about our ears and leave us standing in the ruins."
"I'll build another castle for you," he returned with a queer, sad smile, as though he sympathised with my dilemma.