"Reed, it sounds infernally like preaching, and you know I draw the line at that, except from the pulpit. However, I don't know why, even if one is a preacher, it's not as decent to quote Bible as to quote Shakespeare; and there's one sentence that keeps coming into my head, while I watch you, about losing your life and finding it again. You may think you've lost your grip on yourself; but, from your own showing, you've gained a lot of grip on your friends, and I'm not sure that may not count fully as much, in the long run. As for the bore of it, I can't much wonder. I'd go mad, myself, laid out here like a poker, and left, half the day, to ponder on the things I hadn't had time to finish doing. But, for the rest of it--Reed, I knew you in what you are pleased to call your palmy days. They were palmy, too; it must have hurt like thunder to be plucked out of them. And yet," the clear eyes swept from the topmost wave of brown hair down across the intent face, so curiously alive, down across the inert body, so curiously dead; "and yet, I'll be hanged if I don't believe you are more of a man, more of an active force, than you were then." "Impossible." Reed spoke briefly. "Why?" The answer was as brief. "I don't see a dozen different people in a month, Whittenden. You've no idea how few there are who--" "Who take the trouble to come up your stairs? Exactly. Of course, there are some others who'd be glad to come, and don't dare. There are also some others who would be glad to come, and who probably would kill you, if they did. Still, granted the solitary dozen: force isn't a thing one measures by the acre, Reed. It is deep, not wide. Therefore your dozen are enough." "But why the dozen? They come to play with me. I don't do anything to them." "No?" Whittenden spoke with his eyes on his cigar. "Ask Ramsdell. Ask Brenton. Ask--" he turned his eyes on Opdyke; "Miss Keltridge." With a sudden gesture, Opdyke flung his arm across his brow and eyes. "Don't!" he said, and his voice sounded stifled. Deliberately his friend bent forward, took away the shielding arm, and looked down into Opdyke's eyes unflinchingly. "Reed, you must not let yourself get morbid," he said steadily. "God knows there's every reason that you should; and yet, once you do, the game is up. This is a thing you must face squarely, and remember, while you face it, that not one life is concerned, but two." Then he let go the arm, which went back to the old position, and, for a time, the room was very still. "Old man," Whittenden said, after a longish interval of smoking and watching the shielded face; "I know I'm not much use; but doesn't it help a little to know I'm here, and sick with the seeing for myself all that this thing means to you? Of course, I had the letters; but they didn't go far. One has to come and talk it out; and--Well, I'm here." Then the arm came down, and the heavy eyes met Whittenden's. "That's why I sent for you," Reed said. "I wanted you."