“Ah! that Euthanasy!” said Graham. “The easy death?”
“The easy death. It is the last pleasure. The Euthanasy Company does it well.
People will pay the sum—it is a costly thing—long beforehand, go off to some
pleasure city and return impoverished and weary, very weary.”
“There is a lot left for me to understand,” said Graham after a pause. “Yet I see the logic of it all. Our array of angry virtues and sour restraints was the consequence of danger and insecurity. The Stoic, the Puritan, even in my time,
were vanishing types. In the old days man was armed against Pain, now he is eager for Pleasure. There lies the difference. Civilisation has driven pain and danger so far off—for well-to-do people. And only well-to-do people matter now. I have been asleep two hundred years.”
For a minute
