He got to his feet and went slowly out; and that was the last I ever saw of him.  I suppose he consulted an attorney, learned the hopeless nature of his case, and took the first train back to Osage City.  He did not even wait for the funeral.

Few people, indeed, put themselves out for it.  There was a sprinkling of old family friends, representatives of the museum and of various charities in which Vantine had been interested, a few friends of his own, and that was all.  He had dropped out of the world with scarcely a ripple; of all who had known him, I dare say Parks felt his departure most.  For Vantine had been, in a sense, a solitary man; not many men nodded oftener during a walk up the Avenue, and yet not many dined oftener alone; for there was about him a certain self-detachment which discouraged intimacy.  He was a man, like many another, with acquaintances in every country on the globe, and friends in none.

All this I thought over a little sadly, as I sat at home that night; and not without some self-questioning as to my own place in the world.  Most of us, I think, are a little saddened when we realise our unimportance; most of us, no doubt, would be a little shocked could we return a day or two after our death and see how merrily the world wags on!  I would be missed, I knew, scarcely more than Vantine.  It was not a pleasant thought, for it seemed to argue some deficiency in myself.

Then, too, the mystery of Vantine’s death had a depressing effect upon me.  So long as there seemed some theory to build on, so long as there was a ray of light ahead, I had hoped that the tragedy would be explained and expiated; but now my theory had crumbled to pieces; I was left in utter darkness, from which there seemed no way out.  Never before, in the face of any mystery, had I felt so blind and helpless, and the feeling took such a grip upon me that it kept me awake for a long time after I got to bed.  It seemed, in some mysterious way, that I was contending with a power greater than myself, a power threatening and awful, which could crush me with a turn of the wrist.

Vantine’s will was probated next morning.  He had directed that his collection of art objects be removed to the museum, and that the house and such portion of its contents as the museum did not care for be sold for the museum’s benefit.  I had already notified Sir Caspar Purdon Clarke of the terms of the will, and the museum’s attorney was present when it was read.  He stated that he had been requested to ask me to remain in charge of things for a week or two, until arrangements for the removal could be made.  It would also be necessary to make an inventory of Vantine’s collection, and the assistant director of the museum was to get this under way at once.