"You have a corpse there, my friends?" "Yes; a corpse washed ashore an hour ago." "Drowned?" "Yes, drowned; — a young girl, very handsome." "Suicides are always handsome," he says; and then he stands for a little while idly smoking and meditating, looking at the sharp outline of the corpse and the stiff folds of the rough canvas covering. Life is such a golden holiday to him young, ambitious, clever — that it seems as though sorrow and death could have no part in his destiny.
— MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON