There was no answer. He leaned back against the wall. Below, he heard a whispered conversation between Arsdale and the nurse; within, he heard nothing. So five minutes passed, and to Donaldson the world was chaos. He felt as though he were locked up in a tomb. There was the same feeling of dead weight upon the shoulders; the same sensation of stifling. Then he heard her voice, "Are you still there, Peter Donaldson?" "Yes," he answered. "Won't you please go away?" "I shall not go away until I have seen you." Then another long suspense began, but it was shorter than the first. "If I let you come in for a minute, will you go then?" "Yes," he answered, "I will go then." It seemed an eternity before he heard the key turn in the lock and saw the door swing open a little. He stepped in. She had taken a position in a far corner. She had drawn the Japanese shawl tightly about her, and was standing very erect, her white face like chiseled marble. He started towards her, but she checked him. "Do not come any nearer," she commanded. He steadied himself. "I told you," he began abruptly, "that I was going because I must. That was true; I went thinking I was to meet Death." She took a step towards him. "You were ill? You are ill now?" "No." He paused. Now that the time had come when he could tell her all, it was a harder thing to do than he had thought. If she withdrew from him now--what would she do after she had learned? Yet he must do this to be a free man, to be even a free spirit. There must be no more shadows between them, not even shadows of the past. "I told you," he said, "of my life up to the time I came to New York, of the daily grind it was to get that far. That was only the beginning--after that came the real struggle. It was easy to fight with the enemy in front--with something for your fists to strike against. But then came the waiting years. I was too blind to see all the work that lay around me. I was too selfish to see what I might have fought for. I saw nothing except the wasting months. I lost my grip. I played the coward." He took a quick, sharp breath at the word. It was like plunging a knife into his own heart to stand before her and say that. "One day in the laboratory," he struggled on, "Barstow told me of a poison which would not kill until the end of seven days. Because I was not--the best kind of fighter--I--stole it and swallowed it. That was a week ago. I am here now only because the poison did n't work." "You--you tried to kill yourself?" she cried in amazement. "Yes," he answered unflinchingly, "I tried to quit. There were many things I wanted--cheap, trivial things, and at the time I did n't see my course clear to getting them in any other way. The other things--the things worth while were around me all the time, but I could n't see them." He paused. She drew away from him.