Page:Terminations (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1895).djvu/192

180 read them, but when his visitor had insisted on repeating them more than once he was able to shake an unintoxicated head. "Ah, no! but they would have been true of what I could have done!"

"What people 'could have done' is mainly what they've in fact done," Dr. Hugh contended.

"Mainly, yes; but I've been an idiot!" said Dencombe.

Dr. Hugh did remain; the end was coming fast. Two days later Dencombe observed to him, by way of the feeblest of jokes, that there would now be no question whatever of a second chance. At this the young man stared; then he exclaimed: "Why, it has come to pass—it has come to pass! The second chance has been the public's—the chance to find the point of view, to pick up the pearl!"

"Oh, the pearl!" poor Dencombe uneasily sighed. A smile as cold as a winter sunset flickered on his drawn lips as he added: "The pearl is the unwritten—the pearl is the unalloyed, the rest, the lost!"

From that moment he was less and less present, heedless to all appearance of what went on around him. His disease was definitely mortal, of an action as relentless, after the short arrest that had enabled him to fall in with Dr. Hugh, as a leak in a great ship. Sinking steadily, though this visitor, a man of rare resources, now cordially approved by his physician, showed endless art in guarding him from pain, poor Dencombe kept no