In a note like this, closing a work which depends so much on the intimate connection of the author with the scenes that he describes, it is permissible to be personal. I had read, in a daily paper, Colonel Gracie’s first account of his experiences; had been struck by the special quality of the writing, by the pervading atmosphere of true chivalry--no other word can suggest quite adequately the impression conveyed by that narrative, written under the stress of poignant memories. I think that the effect produced by the account was the same with all who read it: certainly I have met no one who did not recognize the spirituality and fineness shining through the written words--a spirituality not opposed to, but entirely in consonance with, the unmistakable virility of the author. And so, when I met him, I was peculiarly interested in his personality: it seemed to me that this man who was sitting at my left hand, talking quietly, had descended as distinctly into hell as any human being would care to acknowledge, and had risen again from the dead--or, at least, from the sea of the dead--into a world which could never again be quite the same to him. I found myself looking from time to time at his eyes; and I saw in them what I have seen only once or twice in the eyes of living men--the experience of death, the acceptance of death, and, the irrevocable impress of death. And, though he carried himself as a man accustomed to adventures and unafraid of the big or little ironies of destiny, he was conscious, I think, of a certain isolation, a new aloofness from the ordinary routine of daily life. He had been so near to the end of dreams, had seen the years flash past so suddenly into true perspective, that it was difficult to resume the trivial round and reconstitute a mental world in which details should acquire again their former pretence of importance. Colonel Gracie survived for less than eight months after the loss of the _Titanic_. Judged by the imperfect reckoning of impulse, it would seem almost unfair that he should have gone through so much, winning his life in the face of such deadly hazards, only to surrender it after a brief interval. But he himself would have been the last to complain. His implicit faith in Providence could not be shaken by any personal suffering. He made a brave fight for life, as he had made a brave fight for the lives of others while the _Titanic_ was sinking. When the end was inevitable, he accepted it with composure, though he had foreseen it with sadness.