The trial then was over. And it seemed indeed that before very long Philip Meadowes’ life too would be over. He who had laughed at imprisonment and laughed at trial could laugh no longer; he was forced to believe at last that the world held him to be a murderer, and that as such he must die. But even sitting in his cell, a man under sentence of death, Philip could not realise it. This the end of him? this, this, this? It was frankly impossible that this could be the end of Philip Meadowes and all his ambitions! of the beautiful life he and Carrie had meant to live together, of that passion clean and hot as flame that burned between them! Impossible! impossible! And then, even above this cry of the heart, rose that keener note of anguish, that supreme utterance of the soul, the terror of unfulfilment. It lurks in every man, this protest of vitality against encompassing and ever encroaching mortality, and has its roots in life itself. With most men the feeling is quite unformulated and vague. ‘They would not like to be altogether forgotten’ is about all that it amounts to, and the fear, such as it is, finds ready cure in the laws of their being; having given hostages to Fortune they have no further dread that their memory will perish—the next generation will carry it on. But with another type of man the case is very different; for though the child of his body may be dearer to him than his own flesh, the child of the soul will be dearer yet. It is this law of aspiration, effort, what you will, that moves on our world at all; for though it is not written that one man in a thousand shall influence the race, or one in a million leave an undying memory, yet it is written that every man, though half of them unknowingly, shall strive after some star, and some even shall succeed. And these myriads of agonising atoms form a great aggregate of achievement out of all proportion to their puny individual efforts, and slowly push the world on in its destined course. Something of all this came over Philip now; above all his memories of this dear, warm, wooing world, that had so loved and courted him, came the agonising thought, ‘I am virtually dead; I must depart, _leaving nothing behind_.’ With extraordinary vividness of sensation he had lived; life had appeared to him as a long feast of rich and varied good things to which he had sat him down gaily. Some day he had thought to rise from it, gird on his armour, and go forth to some stirring and valorous enterprise; he had never decided what the enterprise would be, but trusted that the kind and bountiful Giver of life’s banquet would provide his children with work when they had feasted long enough. Now all these vague dreams of the future came down like a house of cards: he stood face to face with death, his work undone.