And always it made him very soft towards Minta and the children.

Not only did the _life_ instinct cling to them, to the warm human hands and faces hemming him in and protecting him from that darkness beyond with its shapes of terror.

But to think of himself as sick, and gasping to his end, like his father, was to put himself back in his old relation to his wife, when they were first married.

He might cross Minta now, but if he came to lie sick, he could see himself there, in the future, following her about with his eyes, and thanking her, and doing all she told him, just as he'd used to do.

He couldn't die without her to help him through.