l be in lives to come.

"And this is what I want for you." He held her close a moment. The tears
were rolling down her cheeks. "Until now you have been one of us, too. You
have never once been free. You have been the one in this house to step in
and take hold and try to decide what's best to be done. I'm not putting you
up on a pedestal, I don't say you've made no mistakes--but I say you're the
kind of a woman who craves what's in a family. You're the one of my
daughters who has loved this house the most!"

"Yes," she said, "I've loved this house--"

"But now for you all this will stop--quite suddenly," he told her. "This
house of ours will soon be sold. And within a few months I shall be dead,
and your family will have dropped out of your life."

"Stop! Can't you? Stop! It's brutal! It isn't true about you!" she cried.
"I won't believe it!" Her voice broke.

"Go and see my physician," he said.

"How long have you known it? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because we had troubles enough as it was, other things to think of. But
there's only one thing now, this freedom you are facing."

"Please! Please!" she cried imploringly. "I don't want to talk of myself
but of you! This physician--"

"No," he answered with stern pain, "you'll have to hear me out, my child.
We're talking of you--of you alone when I am gone. How will it be? Are you
quite sure? You will have your work, that vision of yours, and I know how
close it has been to you, vivid and warm, almost like a friend. But so was
my business once like that, when I was as young as you. And the business
grew and it got cold--impersonal, a mere machine. Thank God I had a family.
Isn't your work growing too? Are you sure it won't become a machine? And
won't you lose touch with the children then, unless you have a child of
your own? Friends won't be enough, you'll find, they're not bound up into
yourself. The world may reach a stage at last where we shall live on in the
lives of all--we may all be one big family. But that time is still far
off--we hold to our own flesh and blood. And so I'm sure it will be with
you. You see you have been young, my dear, and your spirit has been fresh
and new. But how are you going to keep it so, without the ties you've
always had?" He felt the violent clutch of her hand.

"_You won't die_!" she whispered. But he went on relentlessly:

"And what will you do without Allan Baird? For you see you have not even
worked alone. You have had this