I have never seen very much of him since I left Cambridge; but there I was a good deal in his company—­and we have kept up our friendship ever since, in the quiet way in which Englishmen do keep up their friendships, meeting perhaps two or three times in the year, exchanging letters occasionally.  He was not a very intimate friend—­indeed, he was not a man who formed intimacies; but he was a congenial companion enough.  He was a frankly ambitious man.  He went to the bar, where he has done well; he married a wife with some money; and I think his ultimate ambition has been to enter Parliament.  He told me, when I last saw him, that he had now, he thought, made enough money for this, and that he would probably stand at the next election.  I have always liked his wife, who is a sensible, good-natured woman, with social ambitions.  They live in a good house in London, in a wealthy sort of way.  I arrived to luncheon, and sate a little while with Mrs. Darell in the drawing-room.  I became aware, while I sate with her, that there was a sense of anxiety in the air somehow, though she spoke cheerfully enough of her husband, saying that he had overworked himself, and had to lie up for a little.  When he came into the room I understood.  It was not that he was physically much altered—­he is a strongly-built fellow, with a sanguine complexion and thick curly hair, now somewhat grizzled; but I knew at the first sight of him that matters were serious.  He was quiet and even cheerful in manner, but he had a look on his face that I had never seen before, the look of a man whose view of life has been suddenly altered, and who is preparing himself for the last long journey.  I knew instinctively that he believed himself a doomed man.  He said very little about himself, and I did not ask him much; he talked about my books, and a good deal about old friends; but all with a sense, I thought, of detachment, as though he were viewing everything over a sort of intangible fence.  After luncheon, we adjourned to his study and smoked.  He then said a few words about his illness, and added that it had altered his plans.  “I am told,” he said, “that I must take a good long holiday—­rather a difficult job for a man who cares a great deal about his work and very little about anything else;” he added a few medical details, from which I gathered the nature of his illness.  Then he went on to talk of casual matters; it seemed to interest him to discuss what had been happening to our school and college friends; but I knew, without being told, that he wished me to understand that he did not expect to resume his place in the world—­and indeed I divined, by some dim communication of the spirit, that he thought my visit was probably a farewell.  But he talked with unabated courage and interest, smiling where he would in old days have laughed, and speaking of our friends with more tenderness than was his wont.  Only once did he half betray what was in his mind:  “It is rather strange,” he said, “to