"After all," he argued, "how much poorer would Wales be if I were gone? The hole would soon be filled."
"I can't agree with you," I answered slowly; "your life is more important to others than you think, and you would risk it in a field for which you are not physically fitted. You have overdrawn your brain account at the Bank of Nature, and flesh is paying up. You must go home until the note is settled."
"Sounds rational but horribly mathematical--and I always hated mathematics. Hope I'll be able," he continued mischievously, "to repay the 'interest' you and uncle are taking in me."
"We want you to consider the matter philosophically," I said, "not mathematically."
"That's better," he replied, with his usual bright smile; "philosophy comes more natural to me. True, it savours of Euclid, but I can forgive it that offence; it has so many virtues."
He remained silent a few moments, thinking, and then asked me suddenly: "If I go home, how soon can I get back to France?"
"I hope you won't return here," I replied gravely; "it would be suicidal, and, flattery aside, your life is too valuable to be sacrificed over here."
"Perhaps you are right," he murmured pensively, as though we were discussing a third party whose life interested him only in an impersonal manner, and without exhibiting the slightest self-consciousness or vanity. "It might be better if I stayed at home. I admit," he continued more brightly, "I have a selfish desire to live. I am so young and have seen so little of this great big interesting world and I want so much to know what it all means. Still I would far sooner die than feel myself a slacker or a 'skrimshanker.'"
"No one will mistake you for either," I returned warmly. "Your lungs are not strong, and I fear if you remain here in the cold and wet you will not recover."
"There's so much in life to live for," he cried animatedly; "besides, I'm a little dubious of the _after_ world. For a little longer I should like to learn what tangible pleasures this world offers, rather than tempt the unsubstantiated promises of a future state."
"But surely you believe in an after life?" I enquired, in some surprise.
"It's difficult to believe what one cannot prove," he returned evasively.