And yet this was no solution, especially after he had talked again to his friend of all it had been his plan she should finally do for him.  He had talked in the other days, and she had responded with a frankness qualified¹ only by a courteous² reluctance³, a reluctance that touched him, to linger on the question of his death.  She had then practically accepted the charge, suffered him to feel he could depend upon her to be the eventual⁴ guardian⁵ of his shrine⁶; and it was in the name of what had so passed between them that he appealed to her not to forsake⁷ him in his age.  She listened at present with shining coldness and all her habitual⁸ forbearance to insist on her terms; her deprecation was even still tenderer, for it expressed the compassion⁹ of her own sense that he was abandoned.  Her terms, however, remained the same, and scarcely the less audible for not being uttered; though he was sure that secretly even more than he she felt bereft¹⁰ of the satisfaction his solemn trust was to have provided her.  They both missed the rich future, but she missed it most, because after all it was to have been entirely¹¹ hers; and it was her acceptance of the loss that gave him the full measure of her preference for the thought of Acton Hague over any other thought whatever.  He had humour enough to laugh rather grimly when he said to himself: “Why the deuce does she like him so much more than she likes me?”—the reasons being really so conceivable.  But even his faculty¹² of analysis left the irritation¹³ standing¹⁴, and this irritation proved perhaps the greatest misfortune that had ever overtaken him.  There had been nothing yet that made him so much want to give up.  He had of course by this time well reached the age of renouncement¹⁶; but it had not hitherto been vivid to him that it was time to give up everything.  
Practically, at the end of six months, he had renounced¹⁷ the friendship once so charming and comforting.  His privation had two faces, and the face it had turned to him on the occasion of his last attempt to cultivate that friendship was the one he could look at least.  This was the privation he inflicted¹⁸; the other was the privation he bore.  The conditions she never phrased he used to murmur¹⁹ to himself in solitude²⁰: “One more, one more—only just one.”  Certainly he was going down; he often felt it when he caught himself, over his work, staring at vacancy²¹ and giving voice to that inanity²².  There was proof enough besides in his being so weak and so ill.  His irritation took the form of melancholy²³, and his melancholy that of the conviction that his health had quite failed.  His altar moreover had ceased to exist; his chapel²⁴, in his dreams, was a great dark cavern²⁵.  All the lights had gone out—all his Dead had died again.  He couldn’t exactly see at first how it had been in the power of his late companion to extinguish them, since it was neither for her nor by her that they had been called into being.  Then he understood that it was essentially²⁶ in his own soul the revival²⁷ had taken place, and that in the air of this soul they were now unable to breathe.  The candles might mechanically burn, but each of them had lost its lustre²⁸.  The church had become a void; it was his presence, her presence, their common presence, that had made the indispensable medium.  If anything was wrong everything was—her silence spoiled the tune¹⁵.
 
Then when three months were gone he felt so lonely that he went back; reflecting that as they had been his best society for years his Dead perhaps wouldn’t let him forsake them without doing something more for him.  They stood there, as he had left them, in their tall radiance, the bright cluster that had already made him, on occasions when he was willing to compare small things with great, liken them to a group of sea-lights on the edge of the ocean of life.  It was a relief to him, after a while, as he sat there, to feel they had still a virtue²⁹.  He was more and more easily tired, and he always drove now; the action of his heart was weak and gave him none of the reassurance³⁰ conferred by the action of his fancy.  None the less he returned yet again, returned several times, and finally, during six months, haunted the place with a renewal³¹ of frequency and a strain of impatience³².  In winter the church was unwarmed and exposure to cold forbidden him, but the glow of his shrine was an influence in which he could almost bask³³.  He sat and wondered to what he had reduced his absent associate and what she now did with the hours of her absence.  There were other churches, there were other altars, there were other candles; in one way or another her piety³⁴ would still operate; he couldn’t absolutely have deprived her of her rites³⁵.  So he argued, but without contentment; for he well enough knew there was no other such rare semblance³⁶ of the mountain of light she had once mentioned to him as the satisfaction of her need.  As this semblance again gradually grew great to him and his pious³⁷ practice more regular, he found a sharper and sharper pang³⁸ in the imagination of her darkness; for never so much as in these weeks had his rites been real, never had his gathered company seemed so to respond and even to invite.  He lost himself in the large lustre, which was more and more what he had from the first wished it to be—as dazzling as the vision of heaven in the mind of a child.  He wandered in the fields of light; he passed, among the tall tapers³⁹, from tier to tier, from fire to fire, from name to name, from the white intensity⁴⁰ of one clear emblem⁴¹, of one saved soul, to another.  It was in the quiet sense of having saved his souls that his deep strange instinct rejoiced.  This was no dim theological rescue, no boon⁴² of a contingent⁴³ world; they were saved better than faith or works could save them, saved for the warm world they had shrunk from dying to, for actuality, for continuity, for the certainty of human remembrance.
 
By this time he had survived all his friends; the last straight flame was three years old, there was no one to add to the list.  Over and over he called his roll, and it appeared to him compact and complete.  Where should he put in another, where, if there were no other objection, would it stand in its place in the rank?  He reflected, with a want of sincerity⁴⁴ of which he was quite conscious, that it would be difficult to determine that place.  More and more, besides, face to face with his little legion, over endless histories, handling the empty shells and playing with the sile............