During the last years of his life Basine had experienced the fullest rewards of a virtuous, practical life. At fifty he had become empty. The rigmarole of day dreams grew vaguer and finally ceased. He had become bored with his grandiose and illusory selves. Don Juan, Napoleon, Croesus, no longer wore the features of Basine. There was no longer any thrill in idly decorating his tomorrows with kaleidoscopic make-believes.
There was no great tragedy in this. He was bored with his imagination because he had run through the repertoire of his fancies too often and so, slowly, his days grew more and more void of unrealities. Slowly also he turned to the tangible things around him. He contemplated proudly the details of his shell. It was a comforting shell. It fitted him snugly. It consisted of his friends, his home, his children, his borrowed ideas, his wife.
No outward change was to be noticed in Basine _père_ when this happened. There was nothing to say that the process of evaporation had ended and that there was left an animate husk called Howard Basine; a husk that did not mourn at the knowledge of its emptiness but that accepted instead with piety and gratitude the presence of other husks, pleased and warmed to move among their empty companionships.
It was at this time that Basine proudly felt himself a worthwhile member of society and grew to smile with tolerant disdain upon all persons who busied themselves with the illusions he had overcome by the simple process of denying them life. He called them fools, scoundrels, lunatics and dreamers and he agreed with his friends that they were creatures engaged in filling the world with discomfort and error. His dislike for them did not make him unhappy for he was content in the flattering knowledge that most people, everybody he knew and whose opinion he valued, were like himself. His thoughts were nearly everybody's thoughts and his life was like everybody's life. There was a sense of strength, even satisfaction in this. He relapsed gracefully into a quiet emptiness out of which he was able to derive final embalming fluid for his vanity by pitying the distractions and unrest of others.
Then he died. The sight of her husband lying under the glass of the coffin had reminded Mrs. Basine of the curious fact that in their youth love had brought them together. A memory burrowed its way from under the débris of twenty-six years and confronted her. A memory of wild nights, flushed cheeks, shining eyes, hope and careless words. And the dim yesterday, the long-forgotten yesterday that lay in the coffin with the paunchy figure of the bald-headed silk-merchant became suddenly real again.