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Towards dawn I lit another lamp in my study and chanced to catch a glimpse of my face in a small mirror which stood upon my writing-table. Almost involuntarily I glanced over my shoulder, expecting to find another man there. It was a moment's madness, but as a matter of fact I did not recognize myself. It seemed to me that the change in the man upstairs, who had passed from the world of living things with breath in his body and life in his brain to the cold negation of death, was a change no greater than had come to me. For I was passing, as I knew very well, from behind the fences of my somewhat narrow but well-contained life into the great world of tragical happenings, where life and death are but small things, and one's self but a pawn in the great game.
This, because I believed, because I had accepted the trust of the man who, a few hours ago, had closed his eyes with his hand in mine, and the faint welcoming smile upon his lips of a brave but weary man, who finds nothing terrible in death.