Was it really like that? and in a few more weeks would he too be as an eye that had ceased seeing, an ear that had ceased hearing for evermore?

All the wonderful colour and sound of things!  Were these waning days to be his last poor opportunities to sit at the great show?

Yes! the world was slipping like water between his hands—­and he might not be going to Jenny, after all.

As these thoughts began to possess him, another thought which he had so far resisted grew more importunately pleading—­the thought of Isabel.  Perhaps he was going to Jenny, but surely he was leaving Isabel.  Had he, he could not but ask himself, immolated a warm living heart in a fanatical devotion to a heart long since senseless and cold?  Had it not, after all, been a superstitious veneration towards an ideal of faithfulness which had been Jenny’s rather than his own?  Had he in his heart ever ceased to love Isabel, and had he really believed that to love her too would have been unfaithfulness to Jenny?

Yes, life was nearly over, but it held the possibility still of one supreme blessedness.  He might look into Isabel’s eyes again.

She had but to stand by his side and his poor remnant of life would grow radiant and rounded as the most complete and blissful destiny.  His heart told him that if Isabel could but once enter the room again, and stay with him to the end, however near, he would die singing the song of magnificent life.

Life is tragic, do you say?  Life is cruel.  Life is a splendid portico—­to nothingness.  Ah, no! not if in that portico you have stood for a moment, loving and beloved, by the side of Isabel.  Life is splendid! life is kind! life is abounding, deep-cupped! and each minute of it is a prodigal eternity.

Thus it was that one May morning Isabel sat very still in her little room with a telegram just opened on her lap.  The telegram ran:  “Jenny is dead and I am dying.  Theophil.”  And this was the first message Isabel had received from her lover since they had parted at Coalchester station eighteen months ago.

She knew nothing of Theophil’s wild visit to her room, for the housemaid had forgotten to mention his call; and the strange and perhaps somewhat cruel silence could, of course, only mean one thing for her,—­that Jenny had divined their love, and that for Jenny’s happiness Theophil had determined that they must never see each other again.

Yet, even so, it could not have wronged Jenny for him to have sent so much in written words!  Had he ceased loving her?...  No, that she could never believe.  They had met too really for that.  And, after all, this silence was no more than their sad marriage-bond.  Sad, truly, and a little tired these months had made Isabel, but they had had no power over her love.  That belonged to the realities; that could never change.

“Jenny is dead, and I am dying,” Isabel kept saying over to herself, divining, with love’s intuition, something of Jenny’s tragedy, and something of Theophil’s conflict during those silent months.