When Aldous came in, Hallin smiled and lifted a feeble hand towards the park and the woods.

“Could it have greeted me more kindly,” he said, in his whispering voice, “for the end?”

Aldous sat down beside him, pressing his hand, and there was silence till Hallin spoke again.

“You will keep this sitting-room, Aldous?”

“Always.”

“I am glad.  I have known you in it so long.  What good talks we have had here in the old hot days!  I was hot, at least, and you bore with me.  Land Reform—­Church Reform—­Wages Reform—­we have threshed them all out in this room.  Do you remember that night I kept you up till it was too late to go to bed, talking over my Church plans?  How full I was of it!—­the Church that was to be the people—­reflecting their life, their differences—­governed by them—­growing with them.  You wouldn’t join it, Aldous—­our poor little Association!”

Aldous’s strong lip quivered.

“Let me think of something I did join in,” he said.

Hallin’s look shone on him with a wonderful affection.

“Was there anything else you didn’t help in?  I don’t remember it.  I’ve dragged you into most things.  You never minded failure.  And I have not had so much of it—­not till this last.  This has been failure—­absolute and complete.”

But there was no darkening of expression.  He sat quietly smiling.

“Do you suppose anybody who could look beyond the moment would dream of calling it failure?” said Aldous, with difficulty.

Hallin shook his head gently, and was silent for a little time, gathering strength and breath again.

“I ought to suffer”—­he said, presently.  “Last week I dreaded my own feeling if I should fail or break down—­more than the failure itself.  But since yesterday—­last night—­I have no more regrets.  I see that my power is gone—­that if I were to live I could no longer carry on the battle—­or my old life.  I am out of touch.  Those whom I love and would serve, put me aside.  Those who invite me, I do not care to join.  So I drop—­into the gulf—­and the pageant rushes on.  But the curious thing is now—­I have no suffering.  And as to the future—­do you remember Jowett in the Introduction to the Phaedo—­”

He feebly pointed to a book beside him, which Aldous took up.  Hallin guided him and he read—­

“Most persons when the last hour comes are resigned to the order of nature and the will of God.  They are not thinking of Dante’s ‘Inferno’ or ‘Paradiso,’ or of the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’  Heaven and Hell are not realities to them, but words or ideas—­the outward symbols of some great mystery, they hardly know what.”

“It is so with me,” said Hallin, smiling, as, at his gesture, Aldous laid the book aside; “yet not quite.  To my mind, that mystery indeed is all unknown and dark—­but to the heart it seems unveiled—­with the heart, I see.”