I did not accept these congratulations and I made no reply to her. I was thinking that a little acute observation, a little more consideration on my part, a finer sense of the labour I was putting upon my friend, might have averted³ his death altogether. And I was by no means convinced that his message was delivered, that it had reached the people I had hoped it would reach and awaken⁴. I had counted on much more from Sanderson. This death seemed to me and still seems far more like frustration⁵ than release.

 

Then presently as I gesticulated for a cab near Gower Street Station, I found a pale-faced, earnest-looking man beside me asking for a moment's speech. 'Mr. Wells,' he said, 'does not this[Pg 174] sudden event give you new views of immortality⁶, new lights upon spiritual realities?'

 

I stared at a sort of greedy excitement in his face. 'None whatever!' I said at last and got into my taxi.

 

I must confess that to this day I can find in Sanderson's death nothing but irreparable loss. He left much of his work in a state so incomplete that I cannot see how his successors can carry it on. In matters educational he was before all things a practical artist, and education is altogether too much the prey⁷ of theories. He filled me—a mere⁸ writer, with

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