So I said,
'Well?' He said: 'It's very serious, and in nine hundred and ninety-nine
cases out of a thousand I should be a blundering idiot to tell you.' I
said to him: 'You've begun. Finish. And let's see whether I'll thank
you.' He then told me that I'd got malignant disease of the heart, might
die at any moment, and in any case couldn't live more than a few years.
He said: 'I thought you'd like to know, so that you could arrange your
life accordingly.' I thanked him. I was really most awfully obliged to
him. It wanted some pluck to tell me. He said: 'I wouldn't admit to
anyone else that I'd told you.' I never admired Darcy more than I did
that night. His tone was so finely casual.
In something like a month I had got used to the idea of being condemned
to death. At any rate, it ceased to interfere with my sleep. I purchased
a vault for myself in Brompton Cemetery. Then I took this flat that I'm
talking in now, and began deliberately to think over how I should
finish my life. I'd got money--much more than old Ravengar imagined--and
I'm a bit of a philosopher, you know; I have my theories as to what
constitutes real living. However, I won't bother you with those. I
expect they're pretty crude, after all. Besides, my preparations were
all knocked on the head.
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