Their stay among us is often so short that we are unconscious of their presence; they go away without saying a word, and are for ever unknown to us. But others there are who linger for a moment, who look at us with an eager smile, and seem to be on the point of confessing that they know all; and then, towards their twentieth year, they leave us, hurriedly, muffling their footsteps, as though they had just discovered that they had chosen the wrong dwelling-place, and had been about to pass their lives among men whom they did not know. They themselves say but little, and there is a cloud that falls around them at the moment when men seem on the point of touching them, or when hurt has been done them. Some days there are when they seem to be of us, and among us, but a sudden evening comes and they are so far away that we dare not look at them, or ask a question. It is as though they were on life’s further shore, and the feeling rushes in upon us that now, at last, the hour has come for affirming that which is graver, deeper, more human, more real than friendship, pity or love; for saying the thing that is piteously flapping its wings at the back of our throat, and craving for utterance—the thing that our ignorance crushes, that we never have said, that we never shall say, for so many lives are spent in silence! And time rushes on; and who is there of us but has lingered and waited till it was too late, and there was no one to listen to his words? Why have they come to us—why do they go so soon? Is it only that we may be convinced of the utter aimlessness of life? It is a mystery that ever eludes us, and all our searchings are vain. I have often seen these things happen; one day they were so near to me that I scarcely knew was it myself or another whom they concerned....