enough to find that out, and were apt to blame one another,
especially the husbands and wives, for their crossness. But it is
happily by no means true that conjugal infidelities always
produce tragic consequences, or that they need produce even the
unhappiness which they often do produce. Besides, the more
momentous the consequences, the more interesting become the
impulses and imaginations and reasonings, if any, of the people
who disregard them. If I had an opportunity of conversing with
the ghost of an executed murderer, I have no doubt he would begin
to tell me eagerly about his trial, with the names of the
distinguished ladies and gentlemen who honored him with their
presence on that occasion, and then about his execution. All of
which would bore me exceedingly. I should say, "My dear sir: such
manufactured ceremonies do not interest me in the least. I know
how a man is tried, and how he is hanged. I should have had you
killed in a much less disgusting, hypocritical, and unfriendly
manner if the matter had been in my hands. What I want to know
about is the murder. How did you feel when you committed it? Why
did you do it? What did you say to yourself about it? If, like
most murderers, you had not been hanged, would you have committed
other murders? Did you really dislike the victim, or did you want
his money, or did you murder a person whom you did not dislike,
and from whose death you had nothing to gain, merely for the sake
of murdering? If so, can you describe the charm to me? Does it
come upon you periodically; or is it chronic? Has curiosity
anything to do with it?" I would ply him with all manner of
questions to find out what murder is really like; and I should
not be satisfied until I had realized that I, too, might commit a
murder, or else that there is some specific quality present in a
murderer and lacking in me. And, if so, what that quality is.