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Show 12 Robeck sees Liller wince. But Liller, he knows, will communicate what he has said to the administration as an absolute insistence on staying here. Liller worships him now, but only half-believes his plan. Robeck turns back to the manuscript again, and addresses himself to the conclusion: I take a step which . . . But he does not write. He finds his fingers playing with a paperclip; he discovers himself staring at the spines of the new-colored books, idly reciting the titles when he sees them. He leafs back through the manuscript: Bury the old, he reads; outworn minds can entertain but one real thought: it is time to go. A few pages further on: one must not always think of oneself; there are others in one's world, and its one's final obligation to make way for them. The old arguments for senicide, recast for suicide: the old and finished man has an obligation to rid the world of his parasitic life. Robeck puts the pencil to paper again; he needs only to remark on his personal conviction that the arguments are right, that they are to be exemplified in action. The Defense will be published afterwards, or better, at the same moment as his deed; it will work to change the way human beings live-^and end-their lives. But he is not writing. Again he finds himself toying, this time pencilling convolute designs around the letters of his earlier sentences, while some other part of his mind wonders whether, when his books are packed, the bright |