"I told you I was a student, Mrs. Rawn," he went on after a time. "I haven't got much mind. But somehow, while I don't suppose religion can change business very much, I think of those twelve disciples and their Master, trying to lift the load off of human beings, trying to lift the people of the world up above the day of tooth and claw. I don't reckon they can do it. But you see, each fellow has to choose for himself. I've had this put before me. I could have thrown in with Rawn---I can do so yet, right here, now, as you know. I can hold him up, as he would hold me up, or any one else--I can take his money--fifty-thousand, a million--I don't think he's really got as much money as most people think. He's in debt, deep. That's all right so long as your credit is good. He has had all sorts of credit--and it depended on _me_--on my invention. It wasn't his. It isn't going to be. I've told you why.--But you see, I could make him divide even with me--make him take a third, a fourth, of what I'd won. He'd have to come to terms. He knows that. All right, I'm not going to do it! Failure as I am, I've got a few ideas which I think are right. Maybe I got them from Ann Sullivan--I don't know! Go ask her about things." "And you won't put back the machines? Not even for me?" "Not even for you," he smiled. "Not that I know what you mean by that." He looked at her keenly. His toil-stained hands twitched uneasily in his lap. VI "You're talking about things that never came into my thoughts in all my life," said she, with the same strange deliberation, the same strange direct look at him. "But you couldn't expect an ignorant woman to learn it all in one night, could you?" "I'm not trying to convert you, Mrs. Rawn. I'm going to leave this place. You'll not see me again. But I'm not trying to change _you_. I wouldn't--" "Listen!" she broke out sharply. "I'm set to do that for you--I'm expected by him, out there, to change you. Isn't that the truth? Didn't you see?" "Yes, it's easy to see," he answered grimly. "It's up to you." "It's up to you and me, Charley, yes. You can ruin me and all of us by walking out that door. You can break the lives of those two people out there, and mine, yes, of course you can, and your own.--You can do all that. You can make me come down from this place where you say everybody envies me, and you can have everybody laughing at me and forgetting me in less than six months' time. You can get me snubbed, if you like; you can make me wretched and miserable, if you like. Of course you can. Do you want to do that?" "It isn't fair to put it before me in that way." "I do put it before you in that way. But that isn't the worst of what you could do--you'd leave me unsettled and unhappy for ever if you went away to-night that way--Charley!--" "What can you mean--?" "Things are moving fast to-night, Charley, and we're discussing matters pretty openly--"