y foreseeing, had willed him a
brief pilgrimage; for on that night when Jenny had leaned over him with
that terrible hunger of damp breath, it had been written that of that
kiss Theophil should some day die.

And it was of that kiss that the following May Theophil, all his plans
laid aside, engagements cancelled on every hand, eager life suddenly
trapped in this choking cul-de-sac, was dying.

Death! It was an outrage! He was young, he was powerful! He would not
die!

There was May at the window. He too was full of May. He would get up
and go about his work. He knew he could if they would only let him. It
was the mere rebellion of unspent energies that craved to be used, like
the muscular vivacity of suddenly severed limbs that still toss and
twitch with hot life; yet it inspired Theophil one afternoon when he had
been a fortnight or so in bed, during a brief absence of his nurse, to
rise and dress, and as by a miracle keep an appointment to speak at a
neighbouring town, where he had been promised for a great agitation on
the Home Rule Question. Surely it was a strange enough contradiction of
a year ago, when such meetings had seemed such trivialities in the
thought of death. Now, when they said he was dying--had this world grown
suddenly so significant that he could rise from his death-bed to make
one last appearance in the paltry lists?

He spoke with an overcoat buttoned up to his throat, and a tumbler of
port wine at his side; and as the audience looked on his white hollow
face, and listened to his terrible eloquence, they realised with a
shudder that this was the last tragic effort of a dying man.

Alas! the great world was not to be stamped with his image and
superscription, after all; and only a little faithful company of friends
would know that Theophilus Londonderry was a great man.

This escapade, though it brought on death with double swiftness, brought
too a calm of satisfaction which made it easier to die; and in the
revulsion which it set up, life once more shrank into the background,
and its little triumphs grew paltry once more. Strange, he half smiled
to himself, that the man who was at last really going to Jenny should
even momentarily care about doing anything else!

Yes, he was going to Jenny! So soon! Soon he would be on the other side
of that wall, soon be travelling that strange highway, on the other side
of light and darkness. In a few more weeks he... _HE?_ Would there still
be _he_ anyw