"I have not that desire. Why cure it?"
"Because, Ledwith, you haven't gone your limit yet. There's more of life; and you're cheating yourself out of it."
"Yes, perhaps. But what kind of life?" he asked, staring vaguely out into the sunshine of the backyard. "Life in hell has no attractions for me."
"I didn't make mine. They dug the pit and I fell into it—Hell's own pit, Quarren——"
"You are wrong! You fell into a pit which hurt so much that you supposed it was the pit of hell. And, taking it for granted, you burrowed deeper in blind fury, until it became a real hell. But you dug it. There is no hell that a man does not dig for himself!"
In Ledwith's dull eyes a smouldering spark seemed to flash, go out, then glimmer palely.
"Quarren," he said, "I am not going to live in hell alone. I'm going there, shortly, but not alone."
Something new and sinister in his eyes arrested the other's attention. He considered the man for a few moments, then, coolly:
"I wouldn't, Ledwith."