"Was I right?" he said. "But patience, John Ames; you must be pitifully wrapped up in this--`friend' of yours, to lose your head in that unwonted fashion. Unwonted--yes. I know you, you see, better than you do me. Well, I won't try your patience any longer. Had you not interrupted me it would have been better for you; I was going on to say that while I saw danger I saw, also, succour--rescue--safety." "Safety? Rescue?" echoed John Ames, in almost an awed tone, but one that was full of a great thankfulness and relief. "Ah, well, my awful anxiety was deserved. Forgive me the interruption." Even then it did not occur to him, the level-headed, the thinking, the judicious, that here was a man--a strange one certainly--who had just told him a cock-and-bull story about events he could not possibly know, with the result of driving him perfectly frantic with anxiety and a sense of his own helplessness. Why not? Because the narrative had been unfolded with a knowledge stamped upon the narrator's countenance that was as undeniable as the presence of the narrator himself. Strange to say, not for a moment did it occur to him to question it. He looked at the seer; a steadfast, penetrating, earnest glance. The face was a refined one; handsome, clear-cut, furrowing somewhat with age and hardness; but it was the face of one who had renounced all--hence its power; of one who, for some reason or other, was a bitter hater of his species, yet which as surely bore traces of a great overwhelming sorrow, capabilities of a vast and selfless love. Who was this strange being? What his tragic past? John Ames, thus striving to penetrate it, felt all his repulsion for the other melt away into a warm, indefinable sense of sympathy. Then he replied-- "In using the expression `wrapped up in,' you have used the right one. If harm were to befall her I should feel that life had no more value." "Then how will you face the--parting of the ways?" The question chilled upon its hearer. Was it a prophecy? "The parting of the ways?" he echoed slowly, comprehending the other's meaning. "Why should there be any parting?" "Because it is the way of life." And with the harsh, jeering, mirthless laugh which accompanied the cynicism, the stranger's countenance became once more transformed. The stare of hate and repulsion came into it again, and he turned away. But in the mind of his hearer there arose a vision of that last farewell, and he felt reassured--yet not. Coming from any other, he would have laughed at the utterance as a mere cynical commonplace, but from this one it impressed him as a dire prophecy.