He threw off the covers and the giant arose and stood looking upon him, smiling sadly. He asked for his clothes, and when Louise had brought them he picked at a worn spot and said: "I must get some clothes with the first money I earn. I didn't know that this coat was so far gone. Why, look, it is almost threadbare; and the trousers are not much better. Let a man get sick and he feels that the world is against him; let him get well and wear poor clothes, and he will find that the world doesn't think enough of him to set itself against him--find that the world does not know him at all." Taylor ventured upon the raveled platitude that clothes do not make the man. Pennington shook his head, still examining his trousers. "That will do in a copy-book, but not in life," said he. And then looking up as Taylor moved toward the door, he asked: "Are you going?" "Yes, I must get back to see how things are getting along. Be over again to-morrow." Louise went with him out into the passage. He halted at the log step and stood there, looking at her. "Mr. Taylor, I can never forget your kindness," she said. "All right, but I hope you won't remember to mention it again." He looked at her hands, looked into her eyes; and frankly she returned his gaze, for it was a gaze long and questioning. "Your friendship----" he held up his hand to stop her. "Won't you let me speak of that, either?" "You may speak of it, but you must know that it does not exist," he answered, leaning against a corner of the house, still looking at her. "But you don't mean that you are not my friend?" "I mean what I told you some time ago--that there can be no friendship between a big man and a little woman." "Oh, I had forgotten that." "No, you hadn't; you thought of it just then as you spoke." "Why, Mr. Taylor, how can you say that?" "I can say it because it is true. No, there can be no friendship between us." "You surely don't mean that there can be anything else." She had drawn back from him and was stiffly erect with her arms folded, her head high; and so narrow was the hard look she gave him that her eyes appeared smaller. Her lips were so tightly compressed that dimples showed in her cheeks; and thus with nature's soft relics of babyhood, she denied her own resentment. "On your part I don't presume that there can be anything else," he answered, speaking the words slowly, as if he would weigh them one at a time on the tip of his tongue. "You may think of me as you please, as circumstances now compel you to think, and I will think of you not as I please, but as I must." "Please don't talk that way. Don't reproach me when I am in such need of--of friendship. One of these days you may know me better, but now you can regard me only as a freak. Yes, I am a freak." "You are an angel." "Mr. Taylor!" Again her head was high, and in her eyes was the same suggestion of a sharp squint. "You didn't tell me that I shouldn't think of you as I please."