I
held out my hands wide apart and took a step toward him to bring my
eyes nearer his, for every nerve was set to drive the truth into him.

"I tell you now because your brother's last words to me were, 'Take
care of Penelope.' How can I take care of Penelope? She has gone far
from me. It is for you that his words have meaning. Can't you see?"

His hands were groping vaguely in the air behind him. He found the
arms of his chair and sat down weakly, and with his head thrown back he
looked up at me with an expression of wonder on his face.

"I leave to-morrow," said I. "It will be a long time before I see you
again. Will you say good-by to Penelope for me?"

"I see, David," he exclaimed. His voice snapped, as I fancy it did
sometimes when affairs in the steelworks were awry. "I was so
interested in Hendry I forgot all about that fellow Talcott. Now, tell
me this--did he----"

"I have told you everything," said I. "There is nothing left for me to
say except good-by."

* * * * * *

Far, indeed, had Penelope gone from me. So I had said to Rufus
Blight--almost my last word to him. So I said to myself as I stood by
the steamer's rail and looked back to the towering mass of the lower
city. That very morning I had seen her: she driving down the Avenue,
alone, sitting very straight and still in her victoria; I on the
pavement, taking my last walk up-town in the never failing hope to have
a glimpse of her. Now, what would I have given not to have yielded to
that temptation? She had seen me. I halted sharply and raised my hat,
thinking that she might stop to say good-by, for she knew that I was
going away. She did see me. She looked straight at me, coldly, and
not even by a tremor of her eyebrows did she give a sign that to her I
was other than any stranger loitering on the curb.

CHAPTER XXIV

Time, the philosopher said, takes no account of humanity. "The
activest man sets around mostly," I once heard Stacy Shunk remark as he
sat curled up on the store-porch, nursing a bare foot and viewing the
world through the top of his hat. Did the most active man calmly and
without egotism dissect the sum of his useful accomplishment, he would
be highly discouraged, for time is a relentless destroyer. But a man
can not take so disdainful a measure of his own value. He must live.
To superior minds like the philosopher's or Stacy Shunk's he may be
living his tale of years