"Oh, Jim, if you only would, I'd be in heaven! You have never been across. I'd chaperone you and show you everything you ought to see.

Please go! Say you will! You've said you would, and you can't say no--you're going, you're going!"

"I will!" he said with decision. "You've booked your passage?"

"Yes, but I'll change it to suit you. Oh, goodie, goodie! You're going, you're going! I'm perfectly happy!"

He found business which required a week and booked his passage with Harriet's on a Cunarder which sailed in ten days.

A week later Nan and Bivens returned to their New York house. The papers were full of stories of his failing health. A sensational evening sheet issued an extra announcing that he was dying. The other papers denied the report as a fake. All reporters were denied admission to the Riverside home, and in consequence the press devoted five times the space to his illness they otherwise would have given.

Two days after her arrival Nan telephoned to Stuart.

"You must come up to see Cal to-night," she said earnestly, "he is asking for you."

"Is he really dangerously ill?" Stuart interrupted.

"It's far more serious than the papers suspect. He has had another attack of his old trouble. The doctors say he has a fighting chance--that's all. You'll come?"

"Yes, early to-morrow morning. I've an important engagement to-night that will keep me until twelve o'clock. I'm sailing for Europe day after to-morrow."

A sudden click at the other end and he was cut off. His experienced ear told him it was not an accident. The sound could only have been made by the person to whom he was talking quickly hanging up the receiver. He waited a moment and called Nan back to the telephone.

"You understand, Nan?"

"Yes, we were cut off."

"Tell him I'll be up early in the morning, by ten o'clock, surely. Good night."

The answer was the merest whisper:

"Good night."

It was just dawn when Stuart's telephone rang and he leaped from bed startled at the unusual call.

He seized the receiver and could hear no voice. Apparently some one was fumbling at the other end and he felt the impression of a woman's sleeve or dress brushing the instrument.

"Well, well," he cried in quick, impatient tones, "what is it? What's the matter?"

"Is that you?" came the faint echo of a woman's voice.

"Who is this, please?"

"Jim, don't you know my voice! It's Nan!"

"I didn't recognize it. You spoke so queerly. What is it, Nan?"

"For heaven's sake come at once. Cal was taken dangerously ill at two o'clock. The doctors have been with him every moment. He doesn't get any better. He keeps calling for you. He insisted on my telephoning.

I'm frightened. I want to see you. Please come?"

"At once, of course, I'll be there in half an hour--three quarters at the most."

"Thank you," she gasped, and hung up her receiver.

Stuart's cab whirled up town through rivers of humanity pouring down to begin again the round of another day. At Fourteenth, Forty-second, Fifty-ninth, Sixty-sixth and Seventy-second the crash and roar of the subterraneous rivers caught his ear as the black torrents of men and women swirled and eddied and poured into the depths below. In all the hurrying thousands not one knew or cared a straw whether the man of millions in his silent palace on the Drive lived or died. To-morrow morning it would be the same, no matter what his fate, and the next day and the next.

"A strange old world!" he mused as his cab swung into the Drive and dashed up to the great house. A liveried servant opened the iron gates wide. He was evidently expected. The chauffeur threw the little cab up the steep turn with a rush. He sprang out and entered the hall with quick silent tread.

The house was evidently in hopeless confusion. Servants wandered in every direction without order. Doctor after doctor passed in and out and the sickening odour of medicines filled the air. A group of newspaper reporters stood at the foot of the grand stairway, discussing in subdued whispers his chances of life and the probable effect of his death on the market. The last barrier was down and through the confusion and panic Stuart could feel the chill of the silently approaching presence. Slowly, remorselessly, the white messenger of Eternity was drawing near.

Nan stood shivering at the head of the stairs, pale, dishevelled, her dark eyes wide and staring with a new expression of terror in their depths.

"How is he, Nan?"

She stared at him a moment without seeming to understand until Stuart repeated his question.

"Worse," she stammered through chattering teeth. "The doctors say he can't possibly live. He has been calling for me for the last hour.

I--can't--go!"

"Why?"

"I'm afraid!"

He took her hand. It was cold and he felt a tremour run through her body at his touch.

"Come, come, Nan, you're not a silly child, but a woman who has passed through scenes in life that held tragedies darker than death!"

"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!"