"Yes, I know it will be mine, and so I ask it easily. And what I ask is this. Let us walk slowly while we talk, and I will keep my hand on your shoulder,--I like to feel your support. What I would say is this: if you had been my son, you would have watched over her and stood between her and any pain which could threaten her. You know that what I fear for her now is only the desperate, hopeless misery such an experience as this would be sure to bring her if it were allowed to ripen; for her there is nothing else to fear. No, I know I need not have said that to you." "No," answered Tredennis, "there was no need to say it." "She does not know herself. I know her, and know what such an experience holds for her. Better that her life should be barren to the end than that she should bear what she must bear if her heart is once awakened." "Better!" said Tredennis. He felt the tremulous hand weigh heavily upon him. "I am an old man," he was answered. "I have lived my life nearly to its close, and I say a _thousand_ times better! I married a woman I did not love, and I loved a woman I could not marry." "And you wished to ask me," said Tredennis, breaking the short silence which followed. "I ask you to defend her against this pain. If I were a younger and stronger man, I might do for her what I ask of you; but I cannot often be with her. You are with her day after day. She likes you." "I have fancied," Tredennis said, "that she did _not_ like me." "It is only fancy. She sees in you the strength she vaguely longed for when she was at the turning-point of her life. Let her feel that it is always near her, and that she may rely upon it now. You are fond of her children,--talk to her of them. When you see her inclined to be silent and unlike herself, bring them to her mind; when that fellow is there, manage that she shall think of them. Her tenderness for them is your stronghold and mine. To-night, why did I take her to the nursery? Because they lay asleep there, and when she saw them she stopped to cover them more warmly, and touch them with her hand, and bend to kiss them, and forgot her 'Serenade.' She loves them better than she loves anything else on earth,--better than she could love anything else, perhaps. That's her woman's way. God made it so. That is the one help and safeguard He gave to women out of the whole bitter universe. Bring her back to her children at her saddest and weariest, and when the fight is hardest, and they will beat the rest back. It is Nature. You will do what I ask, I know. "I shall be more at ease," he said next, "that I have asked this of you. When you are with her I shall feel that she is safe. I trust her in your hands." "I will try to be worthy of the trust." "It is rather a strange one to repose in a man of your age, but I give it to you with the rest,--it goes with the tie you wished for. It is a relief to me to share it with a strong fellow who can bear it well."