“A good one.”
“So that a man would rather have more than less of happiness?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Then does it not seem to you that you would do well to postpone your suicide indefinitely?”
“But I have just said I can’t live without her.”
“You have still more recently declared yourself truly happy.”
“Yes, but—”
“Now, be careful, Mr. Smith. Remember, this is a matter of life and death. Try to do yourself justice. I have asked you—”
But the undergraduate was walking away, not without a certain dignity.
The Duke felt that he had not handled his man skilfully. He remembered that even Socrates, for all the popular charm of his mock-modesty and his true geniality, had ceased after a while to be tolerable. Without such a manner to grace his method, Socrates would have had a very brief time indeed. The Duke recoiled from what he took to be another pitfall. He almost smelt hemlock.