“I would,” he answered slowly, “if I could! But I haven’t been so very successful in my gift-giving to-day. So I don’t feel very sure of myself. You’ll be patient, won’t you, while I try to understand?” Slowly and humbly he felt his way, with wistful pauses. “There is so much that is new to me, to understand.” Deep in thought he gazed into the past. “You have been very patient with me. I see now how often I have been self-absorbed and selfish, bringing it all to you, every worry. I have taken,--I see it now--much sympathy and given very little. It’s a little late, isn’t it, after sixty years, to ask you to excuse it?” He shook his head with a strange, sad little smile. “How I have talked to you! Always! It must indeed have seemed to you a long, long listening! I am sorry!” “But I am not sorry, Henry!” “No!” his face brightened. “For if I have been self-absorbed, you at least can remember that you have been very good to me. That helps, does it not?” he pleaded quickly. “That thought helps a little toward cheer? For as I try to understand, I do not seem able to look back and read my life without you. You have always strengthened me. You have never failed me.” “Until to-day?” Her whisper sent a shiver of hurt along his lips, but in a moment he achieved steadiness, holding self at bay. “That!” his breath caught, then low words that grew calm, “But as you said, it is perhaps my turn now, to listen to you. It is only fair, as you said, that I should listen and see, at last.” “I never meant you to see. I always knew what would happen if you did.” Her voice throbbed through the dusky room, with strange finality, “And now it _has_ happened!” His eyes met hers, crystal clear, “Nothing has happened,” he said simply; “I think nothing ever happens, does it, to friends?”