It is death that is the guide of our life, and our life has no goal but death. Our death is the mould into which our life flows: it is death that has shaped our features. Of the dead alone should portraits be painted, for it is only they who are truly themselves, and who, for one instant, stand revealed even as they are. What life is there but becomes radiant when the pure, cold, simple light falls on it at the last hour? It is, perhaps, the same light that floats around children’s faces when they smile at us; and the silence that steals over us then is akin to that of the chamber where there will be peace for evermore. I have known many whom the same death was leading by the hand, and when my memory dwells upon them I see a band of children, of youths and maidens, who seem to be all coming forth from the same house. A strange fraternity already unites them: it may be that they recognise each other by birth-marks we cannot discover, that they furtively exchange solemn signals of silence. They are the eager children of precocious death. At school we were vaguely conscious of them. They seemed to be at the same time seeking and avoiding each other, like people who are afflicted with the same infirmity. They were to be seen together, in remote corners of the garden, under the trees. Their mysterious smile flew fitfully across their lips, and there lurked a gravity beneath, a curious fear lest a secret should escape. Silence would almost always fall upon them, when those who were to live drew near. Were they already speaking of the event, or did they know that the event was speaking through them, and in their despite? Were they forming a circle round it, and trying to keep it hidden from indifferent eyes? There were times when they seemed to be looking down upon us from a lofty tower; and, for all that we were the stronger, we dared not molest them. For truly there is nothing that can ever be really hidden; and whosoever meets me knows all that I have done and shall do, all that I have thought and do think—nay, he knows the very day on which I shall die; but the means of telling what he knows is not given to him, though he speak never so softly, and whisper to his heart. We pass heedlessly by the side of all that our hands cannot touch; and perhaps too great a knowledge would be ours if all that we do know were revealed to us. Our real life is not the life we live, and we feel that our deepest, nay, our most intimate thoughts are quite apart from ourselves, for we are other than our thoughts and our dreams. And it is only at special moments—it may be by merest accident—that we live our own life. Will the day ever dawn when we shall be what we are?... In the meanwhile, we felt that they were strangers in our midst. A sensation of awe crept into our life. Sometimes they would walk with us along the corridor, or in the courtyard, and we could scarcely keep pace with them. Sometimes they would join us at our games, and the game would no longer