'Of course, of course,' said Lawford eagerly. 'But it is an
absolutely new one to me. I don't mean that I have never had such
an idea, just in one's own superficial way; but'--he paused and
glanced swiftly into the fast-thickening twilight--'I wonder: are
they, do you think, really, all quite dead?'

'Call and see!' taunted the stranger softly.

'Ah, yes, I know,' said Lawford. 'But I believe in the
resurrection of the body; that is what we say; and supposing,
when a man dies--supposing it was most frightfully against one's
will; that one hated the awful inaction that death brings,
shutting a poor devil up like a child kicking against the door in
a dark cupboard; one might surely one might--just quietly, you
know, try to get out? wouldn't you?' he added.

'And, surely,' he found himself beginning gently to argue again,
'surely, what about, say, him?' He nodded towards the old and
broken grave that lay between them.

'What, Sabathier?' the other echoed, laying his hand upon the
stone.

And a sheer enormous abyss of silence seemed to follow the
unanswerable question.

'He was a stranger; it says so. Good God!' said Lawford, 'how he
must have wanted to get home! He killed himself, poor wretch,
think of the fret and fever he must have been in--just before.