“No, I suppose not. You must miss our dear boy at every moment!”
“He was my last patient,” said the doctor with a ghastly attempt at a smile. “I was physician and nurse too, you know, and now my occupation’s gone! I say, Clare, what fools those fellows are who speak of a man’s immortality consisting in his children who live after him, or in some work of his that is remembered. Here am I, getting on towards sixty, who have done nothing, and have no children to carry on my name. It’s a poor old show for my ‘joining the choir invisible,’—eh, Clare?”
“I don’t believe you care very much for that,” said Mr. Clare.
“No, you are right; not when the pinch comes,” said the doctor gloomily.
Mr. Clare was silent; he saw that the man’s heart was full to overflowing, and that, if let alone, he would pour it out in his own way. In a moment or two, the cool sarcastic tones began again as if they were arguing the case of any one else in the world but the speaker.
“I suppose you don’t believe in euthanasia, Clare?”
“As practised upon one’s self, or on some one else?”
“Either, or both.”
“Then, no. In the first case, it is cowardice; in the second, murder. But I should think you could believe in it logically enough.”
“Logic is a delusion, my friend. Logically, I might have spared my poor boy a lifetime of suffering: but, selfishly, I kept him alive months longer than any one else could have done!”