“By giving him courage, as you have given it to me.” “I never gave you courage.” “Yes! And so, let me believe, you will give it to him!” “Courage for what? Be explicit, dreamer!” “Courage to reopen the Southside Mission, and to keep it open,--and every mission throughout the diocese! Let him know that Westbury stands by him there!” “But if--” she spoke low, “if it doesn’t?” There was a stab of pain on the Bishop’s face, and then bright hope, “Let him know you do! That will be enough! And besides,” he smiled, “can you not make Westbury do whatever you wish?” “I never tried,” she answered musingly, “to make Westbury do anything it did _not_ wish.” “I cannot believe,” he cried, “that it wishes the closing of the mission. There has been somehow a mistake. It cannot be. It would mean the going out of a lamp which you and I saw kindled,--it does not seem to me so very long ago.” “It is a lifetime.” The light died from the Bishop’s face, leaving on it all the cruelty of age. “Yes, a lifetime that is over,” for a moment his lips showed their palsied working, for a moment spoke an old man’s querulousness, “they could not have closed the mission without my knowing it, if they had not thought me, already, laid upon the shelf!” “Henry,” she pleaded, “not that, please!” “No, not that!” he cried, instantly himself and contrite, “we pass, but the work goes on! I am an old man who has somehow made a failure of it. But I’ll try not to think of that any more, clouding our Christmasing. I’ll try just to remember I am leaving Murray Newbold and Westbury, the two I have loved, to you.” “Leaving! But, Henry, you speak as if I were not also old! What time have I left, for Newbold, for Westbury, more than you?” “You will have time,” he answered, while the mysticism again touched his face, “my head is not clear to-day, but that is one of the things I seem to know, that you will have time, more than I. Time enough to help Newbold to learn his own strength. He has never tried it. Time enough to teach him to fight. A soldier, he’ll not desert,--afterwards. And time enough to help Westbury rekindle the mission, whose death would mean--you and I know,” his voice fell and he groped a little for words, a little confused, “the light must not die, you will have time to keep the light, to keep Westbury--alive. Your Westbury and mine! I seem to know to-day,” his low voice, in the twilight, was very clear, “that you will have time to help the man and the town I have failed to help.” “If time were all that is needed, Henry, to help them!” Looking into the fire, he did not turn, answering happily, “Whatever else is needed you possess, and have given to me for sixty years.” With the snapping of a lifetime’s tension her voice rang, “Henry, stop looking into the fire! For sixty years you have looked into dreams. Now, once, look at me!” The Bishop turned. Her elfin laugh tinkled, “The fairies were good to you, Henry, they gave you eyes that do not see.”