"It's not very well at all, but very ill, that you should try to waive the subject." "Waive it?" "Yes. You think I'm dying, and you won't oppose me. I'm not dying, and I mean to see Val through this before I _do_ die." "Through what?" "Through her foolish befogment about you. I had a long talk with Harry Wilbur last week. He has behaved well. _You_--" She paused, as if trying to pluck out the heart of his mystery; then, abandoning the attempt: "I want you to promise me before you leave this room that you'll go away by the next train, and that you won't see Val, or write to her, till one or other of you is safely and suitably married." He had a moment's temptation to pacify her at all costs, but as he looked into the old face he felt that a degradation would cling to him if he played falsely with a spirit as honest and courageous as this. She wasn't a woman one could lie to comfortably. "I can't promise you that," he said, after a struggle. "Why not?" "Oh, the old reason," he answered, with a look of weary pain. "What is that?" She craned her head forward. "You have to ask?" "I have to ask." "I love her." "And don't you know--" Her loyalty to Val stopped her. "Why don't you tell her?" "I have." "Then, why aren't you-- What's the trouble?" "What's the trouble?" he echoed. "Yes. You surely aren't waiting for me to go?" "No, no," he said, hastily, feeling his fears for the moment dislodged and feebly flying like a flock of bats and owls before the daylight in the brave old eyes. "No, no; you are not the barrier." "What then?" "I suppose, primarily, it's Uncle John. He left us a legacy." "John!" A sudden mist of weakness rose before her like a veil. "Yes." Ethan turned away, and paced the dim room from the bedside to the fireplace, back and forth. It came over the sick woman that it was just so John had walked and talked about this life he lacked the energy to live. How like him Ethan was growing in air and manner! It was as if John had got up out of his grave to walk the old track in the old restless fashion. What was it he was saying about "the wreck of creeds"? "--the mere expediency of the conventions right and wrong, and yet man's hopeless struggle to be rid of the phantom Duty. If you pass the churches by, she confronts you in the schools, in the laboratory, follows you in the streets, dogs you day and night, the 'implacable huntress.' We may free ourselves from all superstitions but Duty. She, in one guise or another, is ever at the heels of men." "You wouldn't be a Gano if you didn't feel so," she said, wondering vaguely if she had dreamed Ethan's coming and John's going. Which was it, walking the worn and faded track on Valeria's old blue Brussels? "Exactly. So Uncle John said." Ah, then it was Ethan! "What was it John said?" She drew herself up, and shook off the veil of faintness.