And I hadn’t the faintest conception of how much I did adore him till yet again, as he had done before, he seemed to—­you know—­to take himself away from me again, leaving me all alone, and so wretched!...  And I was angry at the same time, for he’d promised me he wouldn’t do it again.... (This was one night, I don’t remember when.)

I ran to my landing and shouted down into the yard.

“Benlian!  Benlian!”

There was a light in his studio, and I heard a muffled shout come back.

“Keep away—­keep away—­keep away!”

He was struggling—­I knew he was struggling as I stood there on my landing—­struggling to let me go.  And I could only run and throw myself on my bed and sob, while he tried to set me free, who didn’t want to be set free ... he was having a terrific struggle, all alone there....

(He told me afterwards that he had to eat something now and then and to sleep a little, and that weakened him—­strengthened him—­strengthened his body and weakened the passing, you know.)

But the next day it was all right again.  I was Benlian’s again.  And I wondered, when I remembered his struggle, whether a dying man had ever fought for life as hard as Benlian was fighting to get away from it and pass himself.

The next time after that that he fetched me—­called me—­whatever you like to name it—­I burst into his studio like a bullet.  He was sunk in a big chair, gaunt as a mummy now, and all the life in him seemed to burn in the bottom of his deep eye-sockets.  At the sight of him I fiddled with my knuckles and giggled.

“You are going it, Benlian!” I said.

“Am I not?” he replied, in a voice that was scarcely a breath.

“You meant me to bring the camera and magnesium, didn’t you?” (I had snatched them up when I felt his call, and had brought them.)

“Yes.  Go ahead.”

So I placed the camera before him, made all ready, and took the magnesium ribbon in a pair of pincers.

“Are you ready?” I said; and lighted the ribbon.

The studio seemed to leap with the blinding glare.  The ribbon spat and spluttered.  I snapped the shutter, and the fumes drifted away and hung in clouds in the roof.

“You’ll have to walk me about soon, Pudgie, and bang me with bladders, as they do the opium-patients,” he said sleepily.

“Let me take one of the statue now,” I said eagerly.

But he put up his hand.

“No, no. That’s too much like testing our god.  Faith’s the food they feed gods on, Pudgie.  We’ll let the S.P.R. people photograph it when it’s all over,” he said.  “Now get it developed.”

I developed the plate.  The obliteration now seemed complete.

But Benlian seemed dissatisfied.

“There’s something wrong somewhere,” he said.  “It isn’t so perfect as that yet—­I can feel within me it isn’t.  It’s merely that your camera isn’t strong enough to find me, Pudgie.”