and of his cough grew fainter, and then all was still. Yourii turned
homewards. All that only one short half-hour ago had seemed to him
bright and fair and calm--the moonlight, the starry heaven, the poplar
trees touched with silvery splendour, the mysterious shadows--all were
now dead, and cold and terrible as some vast, tremendous tomb.

On reaching home, he went softly to his room and opened the window
looking on to the garden. For the first time in his life he reflected
that all that had engrossed him, and for which he had shown such zeal
and unselfishness was really not the right, the important thing. If, so
he thought, some day, like Semenoff, he were about to die, he would
feel no burning regret that men had not been made happier by his
efforts, nor grief that his life-long ideals remained unrealized. The
only grief would be that he must die, must lose sight, and sense, and
hearing, before having had time to taste all the joys that life could
yield.

He was ashamed of such a thought, and, putting it aside, sought for an
explanation.

"Life is conflict."

"Yes, but conflict for whom, if not for one's self, for one's own place
in the sun?"

Thus spake a voice within. Yourii affected not to hear it and strove to
think of something else. But his mind reverted to this thought without
ceasing; it tormented him even to bitter tears.