"It comes over me," said the consumptive.
"What? That pain?"
"No; my life. There is something drearier than death in the world."
"Sometimes life," thought Mortimer, half aloud.
The sick man looked at him.
"Why did you say that?"
"I thought it. Life is a bitter gift sometimes. An ambition or a passion possess us, flatters and mocks us. Death is not so dreary a thing as life then."
"He felt that."
"Who?"
"The devil."