drifted, for a long time, down the languid current of
reminiscence; she seemed to sit passive, letting him push his way
back through the overgrown channels of the past. At length she
reminded him that they must bring their explorations to an end.
He rose to leave, and stood looking at her with the same
uncertainty in his heart. He was tired of her already--he was
always tired of her--yet he was not sure that he wanted her to go.

"I may never see you again," he said, as though confidently
appealing to her compassion.

Her look enveloped him. "And I shall see you always--always!"

"Why go then--?" escaped him.

"To be nearer you," she answered; and the words dismissed him like
a closing door.

The door was never to reopen; but through its narrow crack
Glennard, as the years went on, became more and more conscious of
an inextinguishable light directing its small ray toward the past
which consumed so little of his own commemorative oil. The
reproach was taken from this thought by Mrs. Aubyn's gradual
translation into terms of universality. In becoming a personage
she so naturally ceased to be a person that Glennard could almost
look back to his explorations of her spirit as on a visit to some
famous shrine, immortalized, but in a sense desecrated, by popular
veneration.

Her letters, from London, continued to come with the same tender