His voice was cut by a hurting gasp. They hovered close over him, watching the changes--from physical pain to mental relief--which drifted like sunshine after shadows over his face. Dolores would gladly have died to save him one pang; yet all she could do was to share his suffering. Her heart stopped beating from relief when the dark, appealing lashes swept back again. From far away, yet intensely, he looked up at them. “Remember, John and ’Lores, _nothing’s_--_ever_--_wasted_” As he spoke, a light not from the night lamp was shafted into the room. Direct as a search-ray it found his face and settled there. At its touch Jack lifted to one elbow on the pillow, forgetful of pain; gazed with an alert look into its unearthly radiance; leant his head to one side, as if listening. “I will come. I am coming,” he said. “No, not yet, Jack--don’t go yet!” At last moved from his outer calm, the father threw forward his body to screen off the sourceless shaft. But not the faintest shadow showed. Through his brawn the light glowed steadily. With a groan he slid to his knees beside the ancestral bed and stretched clutching hands across the counterpane as if longing, yet not daring to drag back into the semi-gloom the last of the line. His appeal sounded desperate--tortured from him. “How can you leave me, boy? You are part of me, Jack Cabot. Don’t you realize that? You are all that I have. Don’t go yet awhile, my son--little crushed bone of my bone!” Perhaps Jack heard. Perhaps he should have preferred to wait, if only for the “while” that his man-god craved. But his eyes did not lower from the blinding light or his head relax from its listening slant. Any courteous desire which he may have had to stay was overruled by the authoritative command that had reached him. In a last effort to reassure the beloved two he must leave behind, he tried to smile--was able to whisper: “I am not--afraid.... I see--the way.... The light----” * * * * * Through the numbness that made one pain of her heart and her head, Dolores remembered sometime afterward that unprecedented midnight twittering which had disturbed the boy. Softly, so as not to awaken the great surgeon, she crossed the living-room to the window. The canary greeted her with no flutter of wings. She lifted the cage off its hook, carried it into the bedroom and placed it beside the night lamp. She and John Cabot stood in the utter silence which seemed to fill the world, looking through the wires at the fluffed, yellow body that lay upon the floor of the cage. Indeed Dick had taken it “hard.” Jack’s wish for the small creature whose large love had made him “ashamed” was fulfilled. His bird, too, had gone--set free. CHAPTER XV In justice to John Cabot, the spirit-girl Dolores related next an interview between the financier and his wife of which she was told afterward. So she explained to her demon audience when able to proceed.