"Yes."

"How do you know this?"

"Do you know why you know everything?"

"No, my dear, and I have great respect for your instincts. But your
sisters and brothers are now old enough to take care of themselves. They
must be of poor stuff if they cannot live properly without the aid of a
child. Moreover, they will be marrying soon. That will also mean that
your mother will have many little grandchildren to console her for your
loss. I will be the one bereft, if you leave me. I am the only one who
really needs you. I don't say I will go to the bad, as you may have very
foolishly persuaded yourself your family will do without you, but I
trust to your instincts to make you realize how unhappy, how
inconsolable I shall be. I shall be the loneliest man on earth!"

She rubbed her face deeper into his flannels, and tightened her embrace.
"Can't you come, too?" she asked.

"No; you must live with me wholly or not at all. Your people are not my
people, their ways are not my ways. We should not get along. And if you
lived with me over there you might as well stay here, for your
influence over them would be quite as removed. Moreover, if they are of
the right stuff, the memory of you will be quite as potent for good as
your actual presence."

"Not unless I died."

Again something within him trembled. "Do you believe you are going to