a
better man to you."

"To yourself, Ben,--be better to yourself! Are you going to be that?"

"That is the way,--by being a man to you and to the others."

"The others?"

"The unseen others. You must get Donaldson to tell you about the
others."

She grasped his wrist with both her hands, looking up at him intently.
Where was the change? A photograph would not have shown all the
change. Yet it was there. Nor was this a temporal reformation based
upon cowardly remorse. It showed too calm, too big an impulse for
that. It was so sincere, so deep, that it did not need words to
express it.

"I believe you, Ben," she said, "I believe you with all my heart and
soul."

In the words he realized the divine that is in all women, the eagerness
that is Christ-like in its eternal hunger to seize upon the good in
man. He stooped again and with religious reverence kissed the white
space above her eyes.

"We 'll not talk about it much, shall we?" he said. "I want you to
believe only as I go on from day to day. I 've some big plans that I
thought up on the way home. Some day we 'll talk those over, but not
now. Donaldson is downstairs."

He saw the color sweep her face. It suggested to him something that he
had not yet suspected. It came to him like a new revelation of
sunlight.

He smiled. It was the smile of the father which she had so long
missed, the smile that always greeted her when his sad heart was
fullest of hope and gladness. It was so he used to smile when at
twilight he stood at her side, his long thin arm over her shoulder and
talked of Ben with a new hope born of his own victory.

"I was going to tell you," he said tenderly, "I was going to tell you
of what a big fine fellow this Donaldson is. But--perhaps you know."

She refused not to meet her brother's eyes.

"Yes, Ben," she said, "I know that."

He took her hand, seating himself on the arm of her chair, the other
arm resting affectionately across her shoulders. So the father had
sometimes sat.

"Is there more?" he asked softly.

"So," she answered, starting a little, "not as you mean. But tell me
about him--tell me all about him, Ben."

He felt her hand throb as he held it.

"It's just this; that I owe everything in the world to him. I owe my
life to him; I owe," his voice lowered, "I owe my soul to him. You
ought to have heard him talk. But it was n't talking, it wasn't
preaching. I don't know what it was, unless--unless