“Won’t you come with me now?”

She stood, whispering:  “Come with you?”

And Pond’s strong heart turned a little when he saw her eyes, so circled, so dark with tears that were to come.

“Your cousins are waiting, aren’t they?...  And don’t you think your father might need you?”

A little spasm distorted the lovely face, unveiled now.

She inclined her head.  Pond walked away toward the door; stood there silently, drawing a finger over faded panels.  Behind him was the absence of all sound:  the wordlessness of partings that were final for this world....

She had seen in his great dignity the man who had given to the House of Heth the last full measure of his confidence.  And it was as his little friend had said.  He was beautiful with the best of all his looks; the look he had worn yesterday in the library, as he went to meet her poor father.

They had slain him, and yet he trusted.

No design of hers had led her alone beside this resting-place:  that was chance, or it was God.  But now it seemed that otherwise it would henceforward not have been bearable.  For with this first near touch of death, there had come, strangely hand in hand, her first vision of the Internal.  The look of this spirit was not toward time, and over the body of this death there had descended the robe of a more abundant Life.

So she turned quickly and came away....

She was outside now.  The door was shut behind.  And she was walking with Mr. Pond down the corridor, which was so long, echoing so emptily.  She became aware that her knees were trembling.  And Corinne’s fear now was hers.

She desired to be at once where no one could see her.  But at the head of the grand stairway, in the desolating loneliness, Mr. Pond stopped walking.  And then he held a hand of hers between two of his; pressed it hard, released it.

He was speaking in a voice that seemed vaguely unlike his own.

“It’s hard for you—­for your father—­for all of us down here.  His life was needed ... wonderfully, for such a boy.  And yet....  How could a man wish it better with himself?  He wouldn’t, that I’m sure of....  Gave away his life every day, and at the end flung it all out at once, to save a factory negro.  Don’t you know that if he’d lived a thousand years, he could never have put one touch to that?”

Cally said unsteadily:  “I know that’s true....”

She wished to go on; but the Director was speaking again, hurriedly: 

“And you mustn’t think that a blow on the head can bring it all to an end.  If I know anything, his story will be often told.  People that you and I will never know, will know of this, and it will help them—­when their pinch comes.  There’s no measuring the value of a great example.  When it strikes, you can feel the whole line lift....”

And then he added, in a let-down sort of way:  “Freest man I ever saw.”