nd out of the room, though she had
seemed comparatively unimportant then,--not to speak of eager little
Jenny,--not to think of Isabel.

Yes! the sparkle had gone out of their meetings, which began to have an
air of make-believe youth about them. Theophil's interest was indeed
centred in the purlieus of New Zion, but it was entirely retrospective;
and though outwardly New Zion was more alive than ever, it seemed to him
that activity which once started goes on of itself, and he realised that
in his heart he cared nothing for the work itself, but only for the
music to which it had once been set in motion. Incomplete as in one
sense it was, in another and more personal sense his life seemed already
complete; and while in some moods he would dream of its resounding
continuance, in others he would sigh that it might end.

However, for a while he would still go on living with the shadows he
loved; and as he sat alone of an evening in that silent house, he would
sometimes half fancy that he heard the other occupants moving about or
walking overhead. That was Mrs. Talbot with a creaking basket of clean
linen on the stairs, and surely that was the opening and closing of a
drawer in Jenny's room. Perhaps it was only Mr. Talbot moving his chair
in the kitchen.

CHAPTER XXIX

AND SUDDENLY THE LAST

Had anyone told Theophil that in another six months he too would be a
memory, and that the future to which he looked, now with a sense of new
worlds to be conquered, now with a sense of weariness, was suddenly to
close down on him like a dropped curtain, he would have smiled half
sadly, and half proudly. No such good fortune for his sad heart! no such
miscarriage of his young life!

Young life is so sure of its long lease. All about it lie the broken
dreams, the unfinished projects of others; but that _its_ life-work
should suddenly suffer the final interruption is not to be thought of!
It will die if it please of its own choosing; it will despise life and
coquette with death; but to die unconsulted, with not so much as "Will
it please your honour to die to-morrow week?" is an indignity
inconceivable to youth, however visionary and devoted to the worship
of the dead.

Yet for quite simple reasons, as this mysterious world goes, it had been
decided that Theophil was for as brief a while as possible, allowing for
the leisure of natural causes, to support the life he thought he hated.
Even while Jenny lived, fate, mercifull