Bennett's entire life had been spent in the working out of great ideas in the face of great obstacles; continually he had been called upon to overcome enormous difficulties with enormous strength. For long periods of time he had been isolated from civilisation, had been face to face with the simple, crude forces of an elemental world--forces that were to be combated and overthrown by means no less simple and crude than themselves. He had lost the faculty, possessed, no doubt, by smaller minds, of dealing with complicated situations. To resort to expedients, to make concessions, was all beyond him. For him a thing was absolutely right or absolutely wrong, and between the two there was no gradation. For so long a time had he looked at the larger, broader situations of life that his mental vision had become all deformed and confused. He saw things invariably magnified beyond all proportion, or else dwarfed to a littleness that was beneath consideration. Normal vision was denied him. It was as though he studied the world through one or the other ends of a telescope, and when, as at present, his emotions were aroused, matters were only made the worse. The idea that Ferriss might recover, though Lloyd should leave him at this moment, hardly presented itself to his mind. He was convinced that if Lloyd went away Ferriss would die; Lloyd had said as much herself. The hope that Lloyd might, after all, nurse him through his sickness without danger to herself was so remote that he did not consider it for one instant. If Lloyd remained she, like the other nurse, would contract the disease and die. These were the half-way measures Bennett did not understand, the expedients he could no longer see. It was either Lloyd or Ferriss. He must choose between them. Bennett went to the door of the room, closed it and leaned against it. "No," he said. Lloyd was stricken speechless. For the instant she shrank before him as if from a murderer. Bennett now knew precisely the terrible danger in which he left the man who was his dearest friend. Would he actually consent to his death? It was almost beyond belief, and for the moment Lloyd herself quailed before him. Her first thoughts were not of herself, but of Ferriss. If he was Bennett's friend he was her friend too. At that very moment he might be dying for want of her care. She was fast becoming desperate. For the moment she could put all thought of herself and of her own dignity in the background.