"Then what is it you were about to say?"
"I cannot but feel that all we have done hitherto, as regards this young prisoner of ours, has failed. He has, with a determined obstinacy, set at naught, as well you know, all threats."
"He has."
"He has refused to do one act which could in any way aid me in my objects. In fact, from the first to the last, he has been nothing but an expense and an encumbrance to us both."
"All that is strictly true."
"And yet, although you, as well as I, know of a marvellously ready way of getting rid of such encumbrances, I must own, that I shrink with more than a feeling of reluctance from the murder of the youth."
"You contemplated it then?" asked the other.
"No; I cannot be said to have contemplated it. That is not the proper sort of expression to use."
"What is then?"
"To contemplate a deed seems to me to have some close connexion to the wish to do it."