'
'Hugo,' Ravengar began persuasively, 'you must be aware that all these
suspicions of yours are a figment of your excited brain. You must be
aware that I never meant to murder you.'
'My dear fellow,' Hugo replied with calm bitterness, '_I_ don't intend
to murder _you_. I intend merely to put you in that vault. Your death
will be an accidental consequence, as mine would have been. And why
should you not die? Can you give me a single good reason why you should
continue to live? What good are you doing on the earth? Are you making
anyone happy? Are you making yourself happy? That spark of vitality
which constitutes your soul has chanced on an unfortunate incarnation.
Suppose that I release it, and give it a fresh opportunity, shall I not
be acting worthily? For you must agree that murder in the strict sense
is an impossible thing. The immortal cannot die. Vital energy cannot be
destroyed. All that the murderer does is to end one incarnation and
begin another.'
'So that is your theory!'
'Was it not yours, when you got me deposited in the vault?' Hugo
demanded with ferocious irony. 'I am bound to believe that it was. The
common outcry against murder (as it is called) can have no weight with
enlightened persons like you and me, Ravengar.
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