Page:Arthur Stringer - The Shadow.djvu/290

 it had seldom been desolation of spirit. It had never been desolation like this. He tried to plumb it, to its deepest meaning, but consciousness seemed to have no line long enough. He only knew that his world had ended. He saw himself as the thing that life had at last left him—a solitary and unsatisfied man, a man without an aim, without a calling, without companionship.

"So this ends the music!" he muttered, as he rose weakly to his feet. And yet it was more than the end of the music, he had to confess to himself. It was the collapse of the instruments, the snapping of the last string. It was the ultimate end, the end that proclaimed itself as final as the stabbing thought of his own death itself.

He heard Copeland asking if he would care for a glass of sherry. Whether he answered that query or not he never knew. He only knew that Binhart was dead, and that he himself was groping his way out into the night, a broken and desolate man.