e felt a more passionate grief--an emptiness, a resentment that never
again would he see and talk with him; but part of himself would not have
died too. As he lay, there suddenly came into his mind the first two
occasions on which he had heard of deaths that affected him at all
intimately--the deaths of Polkinghorne and of Hilaria. Of both he had
heard from Killigrew, he remembered. Polkinghorne--that news could not
have been said actually to have grieved either of them, but it had been
the first time in Ishmael's life that even the thought of death as a
possible happening had occurred to him. Hilaria--a sense of outrage had
been added to that; it was not her death that taught him anything beyond
the mere commonplace that death can be a boon, but the news of her
illness, that illness which unseen had been upon her even in the days
when they had tramped the moors together and she had read to an
enthralled ring of boys the breathless instalments of "The Woman in
White." It had been the first time he had recognised that fear and
horror lie in wait along the path of life, that not naturally can we
ever leave it, that sooner or later illness or accident must inevitably
make an end. Even with his passionate distaste for the mere idea of
death, this recognition would not have hit him so hard, if it had not
been that the fact of Hilaria's youth, of her having been, as he phrased
it, "Just like anyone else, just like I am ..." had shown him that not
only for strangers, for people who are mere names in newspapers, do the
hard things of life lie in wait. There was always this something waiting
to spring--that might or might not show teeth and claws any time in
life, that did not, in the form of an out-of-the-ordinary fate such as
Hilaria's, often touch even on the fringe of knowledge, but that
nevertheless was shown to be possible. That was the rub, that was what
he had been aware of ever since. Life was not a simple going-forward,
lit by splendid things, marked maybe by the usual happenings such as the
death of parents, and even friends; but it could hold such grim things
as this.... Once one had seen what tricks life could play there was no
trusting it in quite the same way again. That such happenings should be
possible would have seemed incredible till the realisation of Hilaria
drove it home. Of no use to say that these things were the exception.
They could still happen.

And now Killigrew--before his natural time, though not s