“Please!  Please!” she cried imploringly.  “I don’t want to talk of myself but of you!  This physician—­”

“No,” he answered with stern pain, “you’ll have to hear me out, my child.  We’re talking of you—­of you alone when I am gone.  How will it be?  Are you quite sure?  You will have your work, that vision of yours, and I know how close it has been to you, vivid and warm, almost like a friend.  But so was my business once like that, when I was as young as you.  And the business grew and it got cold—­impersonal, a mere machine.  Thank God I had a family.  Isn’t your work growing too?  Are you sure it won’t become a machine?  And won’t you lose touch with the children then, unless you have a child of your own?  Friends won’t be enough, you’ll find, they’re not bound up into yourself.  The world may reach a stage at last where we shall live on in the lives of all—­we may all be one big family.  But that time is still far off—­we hold to our own flesh and blood.  And so I’m sure it will be with you.  You see you have been young, my dear, and your spirit has been fresh and new.  But how are you going to keep it so, without the ties you’ve always had?” He felt the violent clutch of her hand.

“You won’t die!” she whispered.  But he went on relentlessly: 

“And what will you do without Allan Baird?  For you see you have not even worked alone.  You have had this man who has loved you there.  I’ve seen how much he has helped you—­how you have grown and he has grown since you two got together.  And if you throw him over now, it seems to me you are not only losing what has done the most for your work, but you’re running away from life as well.  You’ve never won by doing that, you’ve always won by meeting life, never evading it, taking it all, living it full, taking chances!  If you marry Baird, I see you both go on together in your work, while in your home you struggle through the troubles, tangles, joys and griefs which most of us mortals know so well!  I see you in a world of children, but with children, too, of your own—­to keep your spirit always young!  Living on in your children’s lives!”

Roger stopped abruptly.  He groped for something more to say.

“On the one side, all that,” he muttered, “and on the other, a lonely life which will soon grow old.”

There fell a dangerous silence.  And sharply without warning, the influence, deep and invisible, of many generations of stolid folk in New England made itself felt in each of them.  Father and daughter grew awkward, both.  The talk had been too emotional.  Each made, as by an instinct, a quick strong effort at self-control, and felt about for some way to get back upon their old easy footing.  Roger turned to his daughter.  Her head was still bent, her hands clasped tight, but she was frowning down at them now, although her face was still wet with tears.  She drew a deep unsteady breath.

“Well, Deborah,” he said simply, “here I’ve gone stumbling on like a fool.  I don’t know what I’ve said or how you have listened.”