"I can't help it; I'm afraid," she cried, shivering and drawing closer. "Come, drive out of your thoughts the old foolish shadows that make the end of life a horror. To me dying has come to mean the breaking of bars. You taught me this the day you killed my soul." "Hush, Jim!" "It's true, don't be foolish," he whispered. "The day you killed me, long ago, I was lonely and afraid at first, and then I saw that death is only the gray mystery of the dawn. Come, I'm ashamed of you. If Cal is calling, go to him at once. You must see him." "I can't! Tell him that I'm ill." "I won't lie to him in such an hour." Shivering in silence she led Stuart to the door of Bivens's room and fled to her own. On another magnificent bed of gleaming ebony inlaid with rows of opals, thousands of opals, Stuart found the little shrivelled form. The swarthy face was white and drawn, the hard thin lips fallen back from two rows of smooth teeth in pitiful, fevered weakness. He was trying to talk to the pastor of his church, while the fashionable clergymen bent over him with an expression of helpless misery, now and then wiping the perspiration from his sleek, well-fed neck. "I want you to go into that next room and pray," the little man gasped. "I haven't done anything very good or great yet, but I have plans, great plans! Tell them to God, ask Him to give me a chance. Ten years more--or five--or one--and I'll do these things." The shifting eyes caught sight of Stuart. He released the minister's hand and raised his own to his friend. "Jim!" The preacher moved aside with a sigh of relief and softly tiptoed out of the room as Stuart took the outstretched hand. "It's awfully good of you to come up here so soon," he began feebly. "I've some plans I want you to carry out for me right away. You see I never thought before of the world as a place where there were so many men and women sick and suffering--thousands and tens and hundreds of thousands. These doctors say that every night in New York alone there are half a million people sick or bending over the beds of loved ones who are suffering, and two hundred die every day." He paused for breath, and the black eyes stared at his friend. "Jim, I can't die! I haven't lived! I've got to get up from here and do some things I've meant to do--all those sick people--I've got to do something for them. I'm going to build palaces for the lame, the halt, the sick, the blind. I'm going to gather the great men of science from the ends of the earth and set them to work to lift this shadow from the world." A sudden pain seized and convulsed his frail body and Stuart called the doctors from the next room. They stood by in helpless sympathy. "Can't you stop this pain?" the financier gasped in anger. "What are you here for? Am I not able to buy enough morphine to stop this hellish agony?" His family doctor bent and said: "Your heart action is too low just now, Mr. Bivens, you can't stand it."