Mendel fought back out of the shadow—back to the policeman, and the sick men lying in the rows of beds, and the dead man lying in the bed which had just been surrounded by a screen, and the simple, wonderful people in the waiting-room downstairs, and the sun streaming through the windows, and the teeming life outside in London—wonderful, splendid London, the very heart of the world. . . . It was well for Logan to lose sight of these things. He was a dying man. But Mendel was alive, never more alive than now, in face of the shadow of death, and he would not think the thoughts of a dying man unless they could be shaped in the likeness of life. He gathered together all his forces, summoned up everything that urged him towards life and towards art, and of his own strong living will plunged after Logan, no longer in obedience to Logan’s frozen purpose, but as a friend giving to his friend the meed that was due to him.
He took Logan’s hand and pressed it, and chafed it gently to make it warm, and Logan smiled at him, and an expression of anguish came into his face as the warmth of his friend wrapped him round, penetrated him, thawed and melted his purpose, with which he had lived for so many empty, solitary days until it had driven him to make an end. The coldness in his friend touched Mendel’s heart and was like a stab through it, and he felt soon a marvellous release, as if his blood were flowing again, and it seemed that the weaknesses on which Logan had laid his finger were borne down with him into the shadow.
Mendel remembered Cézanne’s portrait of his wife, and how he had intended to tell Logan that it had made him feel like a tree with the sap running through it to the budding leaves in spring.
He told him now, and added:—
“It doesn’t matter that I did not understand you in life.”
“No,” said Logan. “Don’t go away!”
“I’ll stay,” replied Mendel; “I’ll stay.”
Then he was in a horrible agony again, as the marvellous clarity he had just won disappeared. Logan knew what he was doing, that he was taking with him all the weaknesses and vain follies which had so nearly brought them both to baseness, and Mendel knew that Logan must continue as a powerful force in his work; but he crushed the rising revolt in himself, the last despairing effort of his weakness, and gave himself up to feeding the extraordinary delight it was to the poor wretch, lying there with his force ebbing away, to give himself up to a pure artistic purpose such as had been denied him in his tangled life. Through this artistic purpose Logan could rise above the natural ebbing process of his vitality, which sucked away with it the baseness and the folly he had brought into his friend’s life. He could rejoice in the contact of their minds, the mingling of their souls, the proud salute of this meeting and farewell. It was nothing to him that he was dying, little enough that he had lived, for he knew that he had never lived until now.
The nurse came and said the patient must rest.