What is needed in a companion is not brilliance of conversation, but the power to make you feel that you are not quite alone in the universe.  Dogs and even children possess this quality for some happily constituted individuals, but for others it is a necessity that the companion be a human being.

A human being, the quieter the better, if possible a rather large man, diffusing a sense of warmth and safety, with perhaps no other gifts than kindliness and a pipe; and sometimes you have the best of company.  And Mr. Moggridge, as we know, had brains too, and interesting instincts for new things.  But his best gift was his humanity.  Thus Theophil encouraged his evening calls and contrived to prolong them, though the two would often sit almost silent by the hour, their pipes alone making a sort of conversation.

Sometimes the young lions of “The Dawn” would come to supper, as in the old days, as Theophil called a year ago; but supper was a poor thing without Mrs. Talbot popping in and out of the room, though she had seemed comparatively unimportant then,—­not to speak of eager little Jenny,—­not to think of Isabel.

Yes! the sparkle had gone out of their meetings, which began to have an air of make-believe youth about them.  Theophil’s interest was indeed centred in the purlieus of New Zion, but it was entirely retrospective; and though outwardly New Zion was more alive than ever, it seemed to him that activity which once started goes on of itself, and he realised that in his heart he cared nothing for the work itself, but only for the music to which it had once been set in motion.  Incomplete as in one sense it was, in another and more personal sense his life seemed already complete; and while in some moods he would dream of its resounding continuance, in others he would sigh that it might end.

However, for a while he would still go on living with the shadows he loved; and as he sat alone of an evening in that silent house, he would sometimes half fancy that he heard the other occupants moving about or walking overhead.  That was Mrs. Talbot with a creaking basket of clean linen on the stairs, and surely that was the opening and closing of a drawer in Jenny’s room.  Perhaps it was only Mr. Talbot moving his chair in the kitchen.

CHAPTER XXIX

AND SUDDENLY THE LAST

Had anyone told Theophil that in another six months he too would be a memory, and that the future to which he looked, now with a sense of new worlds to be conquered, now with a sense of weariness, was suddenly to close down on him like a dropped curtain, he would have smiled half sadly, and half proudly.  No such good fortune for his sad heart! no such miscarriage of his young life!

Young life is so sure of its long lease.  All about it lie the broken dreams, the unfinished projects of others; but that its life-work should suddenly suffer the final interruption is not to be thought of!  It will die if it please of its own choosing; it will despise life and coquette with death; but to die unconsulted, with not so much as “Will it please your honour to die to-morrow week?” is an indignity inconceivable to youth, however visionary and devoted to the worship of the dead.