Compendium (editorial précis)

This narrative follows George Stransom, an unmarried, ritualizing man for whom memory—especially of Mary Antrim, his lost fiancée—structures daily life. From early chapters we learn Stransom’s singular practice: he keeps an internal “altar” for the Dead, a private liturgy realized in a parish church where he funds and tends a chapel illuminated by named candles. The ritual functions both as mourning and as moral economy: each light represents a person whose absence Stransom feels responsible to commemorate.

Incidents that test his ethos recur. He unexpectedly encounters Paul Creston with a new American wife shortly after Creston’s bereavement; Stransom is shocked by what he judges a social impropriety, and his reaction highlights his conservative sense of propriety and the proprietary tone of his mourning. Separately, Stransom notes a recurring female worshipper at his chapel—initially anonymous—who shares his devotion in private. He develops a discreet, non‑intimate companionship with her: they kneel together, attend concerts, and walk home side by side. Their relation is defined by mutual restraint and a shared cult of loss rather than by ordinary conversational intimacy.

A critical revelation fractures that arrangement. In her modest sitting‑room Stransom recognizes a portrait of Acton Hague, a man with whom he once had a deep friendship and a public quarrel. He discovers that the woman’s entire private devotion is to Hague; she has converted Stransom’s shared altar into a personal shrine to that single figure. Stransom, still unable to forgive Hague for a past injury, refuses the woman’s request that Hague receive a commemorative light on Stransom’s altar. She withdraws, and their ritual companionship collapses. The rupture exposes Stransom’s latent possessiveness: although he claims to forgive Hague, he cannot accept a material gesture that would equalize Hague with those who “died possessed of” him.

The subsequent months show Stransom’s emotional deterioration: the altar loses its meaning; his social world narrows; he falls ill. The climax occurs when the woman unexpectedly returns to the church, having reconciled to her own change of heart. In the chapel, amid intensified luminous imagery, Stransom experiences both a transcendent vision of Mary Antrim and a renewed compunction regarding Hague. The story closes on an ambiguous note: the woman supports Stransom as he collapses after whispering “just one more,” leaving unresolved whether his moral rigidity will yield to fuller compassion and inclusion.