"More's the pity, no. And I've no time for one. I've a whole family of consumptives on my hands at this moment, father, mother, two girls and a boy." "And you wear yourself out over a few minor effects like that, instead of going at the cause. You may save one or two of those people--none of them of any value, individually; while the same energy put to the root of the evil might save thousands--and they _are_ of value in the mass. Think me calloused if you like, but that's mere common sense economy of effort. You and I--our class--make them live as they do, and we grow maudlin over it and take them a little soup and many tracts. But we won't remit our tithes. We keep them down to breed more misery for the exercise of our little philanthropic fads. I'm radical, you see." She turned her head away with a hand wave that seemed to dismiss an argument familiar and outworn. "I know--but I must do what I can." He faced her with a sudden insistent energy. "Come away, Nell--come farther off. You're too close to the ugly things now--you lose the perspective. Come away--and come with me, won't you, Nell? Come away and live. I must say it--I must ask it--come!" He read the inexorable in the lift of her head. "I understand, Alden--and I thank you--but no." She glanced across at him and continued more lightly, "I wasn't meant to go far off--to go above timber line, as Mr. Ewing would say." He felt bitterness rising in him at her mention of the name, but he laughed it away. "You'll always do the hardest thing, Nell. I know that. But I--well, one of the old heathen--Heraclitus, wasn't it?--remarked that the ass, after all, would have his thistles rather than much fine gold." She laughed. "Dad would say, the more ass he, if he wouldn't." "I know--we'd rather have our own particular thistles, each of us. But to live a day or two before we die, Nell! Come with me--stop trying to mount the whirlwind. You'll only be thrown." Again she shook her head, and gently shaped "No!" with her lips. It was too unemotionally decisive to warrant of any further urging, and he became silent, with something of pain in his face that her eye caught. "I'm sorry, Alden--I've never liked you better--but I'd rather you didn't ask." "You wouldn't have come before, would you, Nell--three months ago?" And she answered "No" again, very quickly. "I must play my little game out in my own way," she continued. "I must stay beside some one--beside people--who still have heart for trying." "Someone, Nell?" She caught her lip. "Everyone who has fresh hope and stubbornness in defeat." "If you'd let me, Nell--" There was the note of real pleading in his tone. "No, Alden." "Friends, though?" he queried, seeming at last convinced. She thought there was a trace of bitterness in his voice, but she answered, "Friends, surely, Alden." "We've skirted this thing often, Nell, but you never seemed certain before."