I have tried to make you picture him, time after time, as the young man of the Wimblehurst chemist’s shop, as the shabby assistant in Tottenham Court Road, as the adventurer of the early days of Tono-Bungay, as the confident, preposterous plutocrat. And now I have to tell of him strangely changed under the shadow of oncoming death, with his skin lax and yellow and glistening with sweat, his eyes large and glassy, his countenance unfamiliar through the growth of a beard, his nose pinched and thin. Never had he looked so small as now. And he talked to me in a whispering, strained voice of great issues, of why his life had been, and whither he was going. Poor little man! that last phase is, as it were, disconnected from all the other phases. It was as if he crawled out from the ruins of his career, and looked about him before he died. For he had quite clear-minded states in the intervals of his delirium. He knew he was almost certainly dying. In a way that took the burthen of his cares off his mind. There was no more Neal to face, no more flights or evasions, no punishments. “It has been a great career, George,” he said, “but I shall be glad to rest. Glad to rest!... Glad to rest.” His mind ran rather upon his career, and usually, I am glad to recall, with a note of satisfaction and approval. In his delirious phases he would most often exaggerate this self-satisfaction, and talk of his splendours. He would pluck at the sheet and stare before him, and whisper half-audible fragments of sentences. “What is this great place, these cloud-capped towers, these any pinnacles?... Ilion. Sky-pointing.... Ilion House, the residence of one of our great merchant princes.... Terrace above terrace. Reaching to the heavens.... Kingdoms Cæsar never knew.... A great poet, George. Zzzz. Kingdoms Cæsar never knew.... Under entirely new management. “Greatness....Millions... Universities.... He stands on the terrace—on the upper terrace—directing—directing—by the globe—directing—the trade.” It was hard at times to tell when his sane talk ceased and his delirium began. The secret springs of his life, the vain imaginations were revealed. I sometimes think that all the life of man sprawls abed, careless and unkempt, until it must needs clothe and wash itself and come forth seemly in act and speech for the encounter with one’s fellow-men. I suspect that all things unspoken in our souls partake somewhat of the laxity of delirium and dementia. Certainly from those slimy, tormented lips above the bristling grey beard came nothing but dreams and disconnected fancies.... Sometimes he raved about Neal, threatened Neal. “What has he got invested?” he said. “Does he think he can escape me?... If I followed him up.... Ruin. Ruin.... One would think _I_ had taken his money.” And sometimes he reverted to our airship flight. “It’s too long, George, too long and too cold. I’m too old a man—too old—for this sort of thing.... You know you’re not saving—you’re killing me.”