“I want you—­to—­to remember—­remember that I always liked you,” he said with an effort, in curious contrast to his habitual fluency.  “You won’t believe it—­some day.  But it is true....  Perhaps I’ll prove it, yet....  My father used to say that everything except death had been proven; and there remained, therefore, only one event of any sporting interest to the world....  He was a very interesting man—­my father.  He did not believe in death....  And I do not....  This sloughing off of the material integument seems to me purely a matter of the mechanical routine of evolution, a natural process in further and inevitable development, not a finality to individualism!...  Fertilisation, gestation, the hatching, growth, the episodic deliverance from encasing matter which is called death, seem to me only the first few basic steps in the sequences of an endless metamorphosis....  My father thought so.  His was a very fine mind—­is a finer mind still....  Will you understand me if I say that we often communicate with each other—­my father and I?”

“Communicate?” repeated Hamil.

“Often.”

Hamil said slowly:  “I don’t think I understand.”

Malcourt looked at him, the ever-latent mockery flickering in his eyes; then, by degrees, his head bent forward in the old half-cunning, half-wistful attitude as though listening.  A vague smile touched the pallor of his face, and he presently looked up with something of his old debonair impudence.

“The truly good are always so interested in creating hell for the wicked,” he said, “that sometimes the good get into the pit themselves just to see how hot it really is.  And find the wicked have never been there....  Hamil, the hopelessly wicked—­and there are few of them who are not mentally irresponsible—­never go to hell because they wouldn’t mind it if they did.  It’s the good who are hell’s architects and often its tenants....  I’m speaking of all prisoners of conscience.  The wicked have none.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“There’s always an exit from one of these temporary little pits of torment,” he said; “when one finds it too oppressive in the shade....  When one obtains a proper perspective, and retains one’s sense of humour, and enough of conscience to understand the crime of losing time....  And when, in correct perspective, one realises the fictitious value of that temporary phase called the human unit, and when one cuts free from the absurd dogma concerning the dignity and the sanctity of that human unit....  I’m keeping you from your cigar and arm-chair and from Portlaw....  A good, kindly gossip, who fed my belly and filled my purse and loved me for the cards I played.  I’m a yellow pup to mock him.  I’m a pup anyhow....  But, Hamil, there is, in the worst pup, one streak not all yellow.  And the very worst are capable of one friendship.  You may not believe this some day.  But it is true....  Good-bye.”

“Is there anything, Malcourt—­”