’The crowd, which had fallen apart behind Jim as soon as Doramin had raised his hand, rushed tumultuously forward after the shot.  They say that the white man sent right and left at all those faces a proud and unflinching glance.  Then with his hand over his lips he fell forward, dead.

’And that’s the end.  He passes away under a cloud, inscrutable at heart, forgotten, unforgiven, and excessively romantic.  Not in the wildest days of his boyish visions could he have seen the alluring shape of such an extraordinary success!  For it may very well be that in the short moment of his last proud and unflinching glance, he had beheld the face of that opportunity which, like an Eastern bride, had come veiled to his side.

’But we can see him, an obscure conqueror of fame, tearing himself out of the arms of a jealous love at the sign, at the call of his exalted egoism.  He goes away from a living woman to celebrate his pitiless wedding with a shadowy ideal of conduct.  Is he satisfied—­quite, now, I wonder?  We ought to know.  He is one of us—­and have I not stood up once, like an evoked ghost, to answer for his eternal constancy?  Was I so very wrong after all?  Now he is no more, there are days when the reality of his existence comes to me with an immense, with an overwhelming force; and yet upon my honour there are moments, too when he passes from my eyes like a disembodied spirit astray amongst the passions of this earth, ready to surrender himself faithfully to the claim of his own world of shades.

’Who knows?  He is gone, inscrutable at heart, and the poor girl is leading a sort of soundless, inert life in Stein’s house.  Stein has aged greatly of late.  He feels it himself, and says often that he is “preparing to leave all this; preparing to leave . . .” while he waves his hand sadly at his butterflies.’

September 1899—­July 1900.