The clarion sweetness of the dance-music, now pealing loudly on the air, irritated his nerves,--the lights, the flowers, the brilliancy of the whole scene jarred upon his soul,--what was it all but sham, he thought!--a show in the mere name of friendship!--an ephemeral rose of pleasure with a worm at its core! Impatiently he shook himself free of those who sought to detain him and went at once to his library,--a sombre, darkly-furnished apartment, large enough to seem gloomy by contrast with the gaiety and cheerfulness which were dominant throughout the rest of the house that evening.

Only two or three shaded lamps were lit, and these cast a ghostly flicker on the row of books that lined the walls.

A few names in raised letters of gold relief upon the backs of some of the volumes, asserted themselves, or so he fancied, with unaccustomed prominence.

"Montaigne," "Seneca," "Rochefoucauld," "Goethe," "Byron," and "The Sonnets of William Shakespeare," stood forth from the surrounding darkness as though demanding special notice.
"Voices of the dead!" he murmured half aloud.

"I should have learned wisdom from you all long ago! What have the great geniuses of the world lived for?
For what purpose did they use their brains and pens?
Simply to teach mankind the folly of too much faith! Yet we continue to delude ourselves--and the worst of it is that we do it wilfully and knowingly.
We are perfectly aware that when we trust, we shall be deceived--yet we trust on! Even I--old and frail and about to die--cannot rid myself of a belief in God, and in the ultimate happiness of each man's destiny.