To the gallantry and beauty of which there is little surely to add. But there came a moment, almost immediately after, when all illusion failed; which it is not good to think of or linger on, and yet not pitiful not to note. One may have wondered rather doubtingly—and I have expressed that—what life would have had for her and how her exquisite faculty of challenge could have "worked in" with what she was likely otherwise to have encountered or been confined to. None the less did she in fact cling to consciousness; death, at the last, was dreadful to her; she would have given anything to live—and the image of this, which was long to remain with me, appeared so of the essence of tragedy that I was in the far-off aftertime to seek to lay the ghost by wrapping it, a particular occasion aiding, in the beauty and dignity of art. The figure that was to hover as the ghost has at any rate been of an extreme pertinence, I feel, to my doubtless too loose and confused general picture, vitiated perhaps by the effort to comprehend more than it contains. Much as this cherished companion's presence among us had represented for William and myself—and it is on his behalf I especially speak—her death made a mark that must stand here for a too waiting conclusion. We felt it together as the end of our youth.

THE END

The following typographical errors have been corrected by the etext transcriber:
which I left in one of the of the library's mantelpiece=>which I left in one of the library's mantelpiece
qui s'est allongée malgré moi. Ton frere, James William.=>qui s'est allongée malgré moi. Ton frère, James William.
At about 5 the fearful revéillé calls us>=At about 5 the fearful réveillé calls us
quand meme>=quand même
my own that it should beeome so=>my own that it should become so
I dont care much what it may be=>I don't care much what it may be

FOOTNOTES:

[1] A Small Boy and Others. New York, 1913.

[2] A Small Boy and Others, 1913.

[3] A Small Boy and Others, 1913.

[4] Expressive drawing alas irreproducible.

[5] A drawing of figures in evening lamplight.

[6] Literary Remains of Henry James, Boston, 1885. The portrait accompanying the volume gave us, alas, but the scantest satisfaction.