"After all," he said, "'tis best you are not seduced like most of your sex into making the accessories of life supply the lack of the primal needs of it, into taking sugar instead of bread, and weakening your stomach and your understanding.

'Tis best for you and best for me, and best for those that might come after us.

Treasure of house and land and fine apparel and furnishings may be a goodly inheritance, but our heirs would thank us more for power to draw the breath of life freely, and you would do better without a gown to your back, or a shoe to your foot, and a mate that was not half a dead man; and I should do better alone in my anteroom of the tomb than with another life to disturb the peace of it, and rouse me to efforts which will send me farther on." Madelon had stared at him, not knowing what to say, with compassion, and yet with growing conviction of his selfish ends, which disturbed it.
Lot tapped his chest again.

"My lungs are gone," he said, shortly; "I need no doctor to tell me.

I know enough of physics myself to send the whole village stumbling, instead of racing, into their graves, if I choose to use it.