“All the more dreadful will it be,” said I. “I had finished with life. I had got through with it. I don't want a second lifetime. One is quite enough for any sane human being. Why on earth couldn't they have let me die?”
Lola passed her cool hand over my forehead.
“You mustn't talk like that—Simon,” she said, in her deepest and most caressing voice, using my name somewhat hesitatingly, for the first time. “You mustn't. A miracle really has been performed. You've been raised from the dead—like the man in the Gospel——”
“Yes,” said I petulantly, “Lazarus. And does the Gospel tell us what Lazarus really thought of the unwarrantable interference with his plans? Of course he had to be polite—”
“Oh, don't!” cried, Lola, shocked. In a queer unenlightened way, she was a religious woman.
“I'm sorry,” said I, feeling ashamed of myself.
“If you knew how I have prayed God to make you well,” she said. “If I could have died for you, I would—gladly—gladly——”
“But I wanted to die, my dear Lola,” I insisted, with the egotism of the sick. “I object to this resuscitation. I say it is monstrous that I should have to start a second lifetime at my age. It's all very well when you begin at the age of half a minute—but when you begin at eight-and-thirty years——”
“You have all the wisdom of eight-and-thirty years to start with.”
“There is only one thing more disastrous to a man than the wisdom of thirty-eight years,” I declared with mulish inconvincibility, “and that is the wisdom he may accumulate after that age.”