Mason was blandly protesting, his color high in his cheeks, when she suddenly whirled from the room. "You are to stay!" she called back from the head of the stairs. "You talk to him, sir," she added to Charles. "He is a nice young man and needs a home of some sort." The situation being embarrassing, Charles went into his own room. Mason, now without his coat and his shirt-collar open, stalked in after him. "Sorry you had to hear all that," he said with wincing, tight-drawn lips. "Great God! do you know, sir, that the hardest thing on earth for an able-bodied man to do is to receive help from a working-woman? God! it stings like fire--it kills me!" "I see, I see," Charles answered. "Your feeling is natural to your particular temperament. In your case you'd better owe it to a man. I want to be frank with you, Mr. Mason. You can do me a favor. I have the money to spare, and I want you to let me advance it for you." "You? You? Great God! man, you are not in earnest! You don't mean it!" "But I do," Charles said, firmly. "It is selfish on my part, too, for I don't want you to go away. I'm a stranger here and I'm lonely. I'm out of work myself; I want your companionship; strangers though we are to each other, I feel as if we were old friends. I can't tell why this is, but I do." "I know, I guess," said the astounded man as he sank into the chair near the window. "I suppose we are both troubled to some extent. I thought you looked bothered a little at breakfast this morning. I'd like to be with you, too, but I couldn't start out in any stranger's debt like that, you know. It is--is almost as bad, you see, as owing a woman." "You mustn't feel as you do in regard to me, at least," Charles said. "I am without a home. I don't want to be alone. I would love to share the little I have with you. Something draws me to you like ties of blood." It was significant that Mason made no reply. He leaned forward, clasping his big freckled hands between his knees. He dropped his head, his reddish-brown curls lopped over his wide brow. He was silent. Charles saw his shoulders rise and fall convulsively, as if he were trying to suppress a tumult of feeling. Presently he raised his head. His hunger-pinched lips were twisted awry. "My God!" he gulped, "I didn't know I'd ever run across a fellow like you. I thank you! I thank you! I thank you!" He got up; his knees, in his frayed, bulging trousers, shook visibly. He moved to the door, passed through it, and went into his own room. From his position near the door Charles saw him reel past the trunk, totter, and clutch a post of the old-fashioned bed. Holding it, he stood swaying back and forth, his head hanging low on a limp neck. Charles ran to him, caught his arm, and made him lie down on the bed. Mason was ghastly pale. "It is nothing," he said, trying to smile carelessly. "It will pass over. I had it once yesterday in the street."