“It’s a brute I am to ask you.”
“Oh, not at all,” he replied pleasantly. “Death is lying in wait for all of us.... The thing preyed on my mind for many months, but it taught me much in the end.... I think now I shall face my own death all the better.”
“Please!” she covered her eyes. “Don’t talk about it. Death is horrible.”
“Death is only the end of the great adventure,” he assured her; “and perhaps—who knows—the beginning of a more glorious one. I have a keen sense of the shortness of life, but that does not horrify me; it makes me all the more appreciative of each hour of it, and it makes me kinder to all men. That’s why I refuse to make a frantic struggle out of it.”
Richard’s calm was very consoling to Phœbe; unconsciously she partook of it and lost some of her dolefulness. For several minutes their talk lapsed. Finally he asked, “Do I look scared?”
“What are you scared of? It’s me that ought to be scared; and I am—scared that it’s a big lie you’re tellin’ me. Millions! Huh! It’s a hard dose to swallow.”
“Just the same I’m frightened. It’ll mean work——”
“Ah!” Phœbe exulted. “So it’s work you’re scared at. There’s a man for you!”
“It will mean work,” he went on soberly, “and slavery.”
“Go ’long with you, man! Slavery? It’ll be the chauffeurs and the butler and the cooks and the landscape gardeners who’ll be the slaves. What’ll you need to slave at?”