“It was a principle, the forcible apprehension of which made him jealous and fastidious in the selection of his intellectual food; often listless while others read or gazed diligently; never pretending to be moved out of mere complaisance to other people’s emotions: it served to foster in him a very scrupulous literary sincerity with himself. And it was this uncompromising demand for a matter, in all art, derived immediately from lively personal intuition, this constant appeal to individual judgment, which saved his euphuism, even at its weakest, from lapsing into mere artifice.” Then comes the sudden death of Flavian, in a fever; and his end is told with apathetic intensity which makes it one of the strongest passages in the book. Flavian is writing a poem, and struggles to continue his work through the slow progress of decay. In this beautiful passage one entirely false note is struck; and it has a special interest because it is the only moment at which the narrative form is interrupted for a moment by the dramatic. Marius lies down beside his dying friend, heedless of possible contagion, to try and communicate some warmth to the shivering frame. In the morning Flavian’s delirious anguish ceases with a revival of mental clearness. “‘Is it a comfort,’ Marius whispered then, ‘that I shall often come and weep over you?’—‘Not unless I be aware, and hear you weeping!’” It is certain that this effort to sum up a thought, which might have been present in Marius’ mind, in definite words is an artistic mistake. If any confession of the terrible consciousness that death was at hand was to be made, it was for Flavian to confess it; and Flavian’s own answer is equally untrue to nature. And so with the death of Flavian the first part closes in desolation. The death of his friend is the event which, at the beginning of the second part, flings Marius into philosophical speculation. “To Marius ... the earthly end of Flavian came like a final revelation of nothing less than the soul’s extinction. Flavian had gone out as utterly as the fire among those still beloved ashes.” Thus he is confronted in the sternest and saddest way with the mystery of death: and the thought comes home to him that he must at all costs realise the significance of life, and how he must play his part in the days that remain before he too passes into shadow and silence; the religion of his childhood deserts him; and he is forced to turn to the “honest action of his own untroubled, unassisted intelligence.”