ave been so
many years a-building? Where will you go for this great rest?"

"Somewhere where I can be alone," she answered him, firmly, "where I can
fold my hands by some quiet, lonely river, and think, where I can
realize what I am; a widow, lonely for her best and life-long friend, a
mother whose children need her no longer, a woman who has tasted life
long enough and paid her debt to the world, and would slip out of it
quietly. Surely that is little to ask?"

"I should say that the fact of your living showed you had not yet paid
your debt to life," he said drily, "and I confess that I cannot see any
great value in realizing these things you speak of. If they are so, they
are so. Let them be."

"Oh, you are a man!" she cried bitterly.

"And I know, therefore, what a woman needs," he said, "and you,
especially, who have many gifts denied, mostly, to your sex. Believe me,
there is only one river for you--it is, literally, the River of Life."

"It is Lethe," she said obstinately, "and you shall not deny it to me. I
tell you I am weary of my thoughts, and all the business of this River
of yours. I have gained the bank; it is philosophy. Before I am driven
far Inland--where even you cannot come and get me--and lose it
altogether, I claim the right to begin the journey of my own accord. I
want you to give me again that delicious, soothing treatment, that
electric whirring, that takes away my thoughts--will you?"

He mused a while, seemed to have forgotten her.

"No, I will not," he said at length. And it was in vain that she urged
him for he held to the refusal.

"Ours is no time of life to soothe away thought, dear friend," he said,
"you need no treatment of mine."

While she begged him there came an urgent call from an inner office and
he left the room quickly, asking her to wait. And as she sat there,
baffled and a little resentful, the sight of the bright, mysterious
machine so obedient there and always ready with its delicious oblivion,
put a wild idea into her brain.

"We are old friends," she said to herself, "I know how he does it--why
not? He will soon be here!"

And she pressed the well-known knob and watched the great discs begin to
whir softly around under their glass dome. At the familiar sound her
hunger for the coming comfort mounted fiercely, and she seized the long,
supple, silk-wrapped cords and pressed the bulbs to either temple. A
slight shock ran through her blood and with the realization o