"Don't speak as though you were going so far," she shuddered. "What will Ben do without you?" "Get him away from these old surroundings. Let him make friends--clean, wholesome friends. Let him pursue his hobby. There are other places besides New York where he is needed. If he is kept busy I do not fear for him." She tried to pierce the white mask he wore. It was quite useless. She knew that there was something in him now that she could not reach. Yet she felt that there was need of it. She felt that there was need that she of all women in the world should force her way into his soul and there comfort him as he had bidden her comfort Marie. She felt this with an insurge of passion that left her girlhood behind forever. It swept away all thoughts of Ben, all thoughts of Marie, all thoughts of herself. She heard his voice as though in the distance. "It is better," he was saying, "to be direct--to be as honest as possible at such a time as this. We can't say some things very gently, try as we may, because they are brutal facts in themselves. But I am going to tell you all I can as simply as I can. I must leave you. It is n't of my own free will that I go, though at the beginning it was. Now I go because I must. Perhaps you will never again hear of me. If you don't you must remember me as you know me now. Do you understand that, Miss Arsdale? You know me now as I am--as no other human being knows me. Will you cling to this?" "You are to me as you are. So you always will be." She met his eyes unflinchingly, feeling a new strength growing within her. He went on: "If we cling to what we ourselves know of our friends--if we cling to that through thick and thin, nothing that happens to them can matter much. It is that confidence which lifts our friendships beyond the reach of the cur snappings of circumstance. So you, whatever you may hear afterwards, whatever things you find yourself unable to understand, must hold fast to this week. You must say to yourself," his voice grew husky, "you must say this,--'If it had been possible for him to do so, he would have lived out his life as I wished him to live it out.'" As he spoke on, it seemed to him that she, in some subtle way, was rising superior to him. Instead of losing strength as she stood there before him, he felt her growing in power. He had been talking to her as to a child, and now he suddenly found himself confronting a woman. She was now the dominant personality. When she spoke to him her voice was firmer and possessed of a new richness. "I have heard you," she said. "All the things you spoke are true. Why are you going?" He hesitated at the direct question. "Because I must." "Why must you?" "I cannot tell you." She placed a steady hand upon his arm. "Yes. You must tell me." "Don't tempt me like that!"