u can do. Ben is upstairs?"

"Yes. I have n't told him yet."

"Tell him," he advised. "It will help him to have an opportunity to
help another."

"Then you will excuse me?"

"Of course. But there is something that I must tell you before you go.
I must leave you both now."

"You will come back to dinner with us?"

"I 'm afraid I shall be unable. I start on a long journey. I must say
good bye."

She fixed her eyes upon him in a new alarm, waiting for what he should
say next. But that was all. That was all he had to say. In those two
words, "Good bye," he bounded all that was in the past, all that was in
the future.

"You have had some sudden call?"

"Yes."

"But you will come back again. Don't--don't make it sound so final."

"I have no hope of coming back."

"Oh," she cried, "I thought that now you might find a little rest."

"Perhaps I shall. I do not know. But before I go I wish to insist
again that you and Ben leave this house and get back into the country
somewhere. Don't think I am presuming, but I should feel better if I
knew you had this in mind. I see so clearly that it is the thing for
you to do."

"Don't speak as though you were going so far," she shuddered. "What
will Ben do without you?"

"Get him away from these old surroundings. Let him make
friends--clean, wholesome friends. Let him pursue his hobby. There
are other places besides New York where he is needed. If he is kept
busy I do not fear for him."

She tried to pierce the white mask he wore. It was quite useless. She
knew that there was something in him now that she could not reach. Yet
she felt that there was need of it. She felt that there was need that
she of all women in the world should force her way into his soul and
there comfort him as he had bidden her comfort Marie. She felt this
with an insurge of passion that left her girlhood behind forever. It
swept away all thoughts of Ben, all thoughts of Marie, all thoughts of
herself. She heard his voice as though in the distance.

"It is better," he was saying, "to be direct--to be as honest as
possible at such a time as this. We can't say some things very gently,
try as we may, because they are brutal facts in themselves. But I am
going to tell you all I can as simply as I can. I must leave you. It
is n't of my own free will that I go, though at the beginning it was.
Now I go because I must. Perhaps you will never again hear of me. If
you don't