Accustomed as he was to look through the distances of human history, to traverse the areas of its religions and see how its great conflicting faiths have each claimed the unique name of revelation for itself, he could not anywhere discover what to him was clear proof either of the separate existence of the soul or of its immortal life hereafter.  The security of that belief was denied him.  He had wished for it, had tried to make it his.  But while it never became a conviction, it remained a force.  Under all that reason could affirm or could deny, there dwelt unaccountable confidence that the light of human life, leaping from headland to headland,—­the long transmitted radiance of thought,—­was not to go out with the inevitable physical extinction of the species on this planet.  Somewhere in the universe he expected to meet his own, all whom he had loved, and to see this friend.  Meantime, he accepted the fact of death in the world with that uncomplaining submission to nature which is in the strength and sanity of genius.  As acquaintances left him, one after another, memory but kindled another lamp; hope but disclosed another white flower on its mysterious stem.

He sat at peace.  The walls of the library showed their changes.  There were valuable maps on Caesar’s campaigns which had been sent him from Berlin; there were other maps from Athens; there was something from the city of Hannibal, and something from Tiber.  Indeed, there were not many places in Isabel’s wandering from which she had not sent home to him some proof that he was remembered.  And always she sent letters which were more than maps or books, being in themselves charts to the movements of her spirit.  They were regular; they were frank; they assured him how increasingly she needed his friendship.  When she returned, she declared she would settle down to be near him for the rest of life.  Few names were mentioned in these letters:  never Rowan’s; never Mrs. Osborn’s—­that lifelong friendship having been broken; and in truth since last March young Mrs. Osborn’s eyes had been sealed to the reading of all letters.  But beneath everything else, he could always trace the presence of one unspoken certainty—­that she was passing through the deeps without herself knowing what height or what heath her feet would reach at last, there to abide.

As he had walked homeward this afternoon through the dust, something else had drawn his attention:  he was passing the Conyers homestead, and already lights were beginning to twinkle in the many windows; there was to be a ball that night, and he thought of the unconquerable woman ruling within, apparently gaining still in vitality and youth.  “Unjailed malefactors often attain great ages,” he said to himself, as he turned away and thought of the lives she had helped to blight and shorten.