He turned to the girl again. She too was one with this past of the room. The straight nose with its shell-like nostrils as sensitive to her thoughts as her eyes, the sharp cut corners of her mouth, and the fine hair over her white forehead dated back to women whose features had long been refined through their souls. All that he wished to crowd into a week, they had possessed for a hundred years or more. It showed even in this girl who had not yet come into the fulness of her womanhood. She sat uneasily far forward on her chair, leaning toward the flames as though fearful of what might happen next. The light played upon her hair and her white face, making her seem almost a thing of some lighter, spirit world. "I don't feel that I ought to detain you," she said, breaking the silence which he for his part would have been willing to continue, "but"--she looked up at him with a half-shamed smile--"I have n't the courage to refuse your kindness." "You have the right to accept it merely as a woman," he assured her. "But I should n't need help," she answered with some spirit. "I don't know what has come over me. I 'm just afraid of being alone." "It is n't good for any one to be alone." "You know?" He answered slowly, "Yes, I know." Did any one know better? The curse of it had driven him to secure at any cost the broader comradeship of men and women which, if it does not come through some more subtle means such as she now seemed to suggest to him, can be found in that cruder relationship always at the command of those with some fortune. The thought swept over him that if he had known her before yesterday, he could never have felt alone again. But what had he to do with yesterday any more than with to-morrow? "It is n't that there is anything to be afraid of here," she protested, to ward off any suspicions that might be lurking in his mind. "It is n't that. I 'm perfectly safe." He nodded, though he by no means agreed with her. "It would be just the same," she insisted with almost too much emphasis, "if Ben were well. I think I must have become panic stricken with myself." He frowned. Then he broke out fiercely, "It's the feel of all the silent people in the city around you, perhaps. They are ghosts, these strangers,--human ghosts with fingers which clutch your throat if you are n't careful. You sense them in New York as nowhere else." She glanced up quickly, "That's an odd idea," she replied. "The loneliness comes then because you are n't really alone." "Yes--here in New York." "But that is n't true of the woods," she asserted. "You have been much among the trees?" he asked quickly, his voice softening. "Not very much. But enough to learn to love them. Especially the inner woods." He knew what she meant--the forests where things still grow for the sky and the beasts and not for man; where man may come as guest but not as master. "No," he answered, "one never feels alone there."