And with that came light on all that puzzled and tormented him since he had known the facts about Nicky, and the mere physical paternity of him seemed a small thing beside such light as this.  That passion of joy he had felt when he had heard of Nicky’s coming had not been wasted:  it had gone to make something in himself he would never otherwise have known; it had gone on in him as a living force, and had helped him to make Nicky what he was as much as one human being can make another.  Archelaus had “won” in that Cloom would belong, though no man knew it, to his son and his grandson after him, but it no longer seemed to Ishmael to matter whether Archelaus “won” or not.  There was at last no striving, no unacknowledged but hidden combat, no feeling of lingering unfairness.

Ishmael knew how, with all his elusiveness, Nicky had been very malleable, immensely open to impressions, to what was held before him, and he knew how different Nicky would have been if Archelaus had had the moulding of him.  Just as even at this hour he was reverting to all he had learnt—­more from watching and imbibing it than any other way—­from Boase, so Nicky had absorbed from him what made him what he was.  And yet, so till the end did the deep inherited instinct of the man who lives by land hold him, Ishmael took pleasure in the thought that, after all, Nicky was of Ruan blood....  So much of earth held by him as everything else began to slip away.

Then towards evening thought fell away too, leaving him only with what he had called to Jimmy a “nice tiredness.”  So do children feel after a day’s play, so do old, old men feel after a life’s work....

He was dimly but certainly aware that Nicky was beside his pillow, his hand upon him, that other figures were beyond, of Nicky’s bent head, but in his drowsy mind it was confused with the head of the plaster Christ that had leaned forward from the wall behind and was drooping low over him.  The hair fell softly over his eyes like the falling of a shadow, and under it he could see the Divine eyes, that had beamed at him now and again throughout his life, but never as brightly as in boyhood, smiling into his.  He smiled back, and then, with a queer little apology in his mind, he turned his eyes away to take a last look at the soft dusk through the window.

Later, when Nicky had closed the sightless eyes, the young moon swam up upon her back.  She who had just gone through her full round scarred maturity and died of old age was now virgin once again, with that renascent virginity some of the greatest courtesans have known, a remoteness of spirit, a chill freshness that is in itself eternal youth.

EPILOGUE