He shut it. "Won't you sit down?" She smiled and sat down on his bed, helpless and heedless of herself. Prothero sat on the edge of a packing-case and gazed at her, still with his air of seeing nothing at all remarkable in her behaviour. Her eyes wandered from him and were caught by the fantastic disorder of the room. On his writing-table a revolver, a microscope, and a case of surgical instruments lay in a litter of manuscripts. A drawer, pulled from its chest, stood on end by the bedside; the contents were strewn at her feet. With a pang of reminiscence she saw there the things that he had worn, the thin, shabby garments of his poverty; and among them a few new things bought yesterday for his journey. An overcoat lay on the bed beside her. He had not had anything like that before. She put out her hand and felt the stuff. "It ought to have had a fur lining," she said, and began to cry quietly. He rose and came to her and put his hand on her shoulder. Her sobbing ceased suddenly. She looked up at him and was still, under his touch. "You don't want to go," she said. "Why are you going?" "Because I have to. It's the only thing, you see, there is to do." "If it wasn't for me you wouldn't have to. If you die out there it will be my doing." "Won't it be the proprietors of the 'Morning Telegraph' who'll be responsible--if I die?" "I set them on to you." "Did you? I rather hoped they'd pitched on me because I was the best man for the job." "The best man--to die?" "War correspondents don't die. At least they don't set out with that intention." "You _will_ die," she said slowly; "because everything I care for does." "Why care," he said, "for things that are so bent on dying?" "I care--because they die." Her cry was the very voice of mortality and mortality's desire. Having uttered it she seemed suddenly aware of what she had done. "Why shouldn't I tell you that I care for you? What does it matter? That ends it." She rose. "I know," she said, "I've broken all the rules. A woman shouldn't come and tell a man she cares for him." "Why not?" he said simply. "I tell you, I don't know why not. I only know that I'm so much more like a man than a woman that the rules for women don't apply. Why shouldn't I tell you? You know it--as God knows it." "I know it as a man knows it. I told you I'd been there." "Owen--shall I ever be where you are now?" "I had to die first. I told you my youth was dead. That, Nina, was what you cared for." It was not. Yet she yearned for it--his youth that was made to love her, his youth that returning, a dim ghost, followed her and loved her still. "No," she said, "it isn't only that." She paused in her going and knelt down by his half-packed portmanteau. With her free left hand she lifted up, folded and laid smooth the new suit he had flung in and crushed. Her back was now towards him and the door he was about to open.