Benlian used to
say that a man went about spreading himself over everything he came in
contact with--diffusing some sort of influence (as far as I could make it
out); and the mistake was, he said, that we went through the world just
wasting it instead of directing it. And if Benlian didn't understand all
about those things, I should jolly well like to know who does! A chap
with a great abounding will and brain like him, it's only natural he
should be able to pass himself on, to a statue or anything else, when he
really tried--did without food and talk and sleep in order to save
himself up for it! "A man can't both _do_ and _be_," I remember he said to me once. "He's so
much force, no more, and he can either make himself with it or something
else. If he tries to do both, he does both imperfectly. I'm going to do
_one_ perfect thing." Oh, he was a queer chap! Fancy, a fellow making a
thing like that statue, out of himself, and then wanting somebody to
adore him! 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." "I'll get another in the morning," I cried. "No," he answered. "I know something better than that. Have a cab here by
ten o'clock in the morning, and we'll go somewhere." By half-past ten the next morning we had driven to a large hospital, and
had gone down a lot of steps and along corridors to a basement room. There was a stretcher couch in the middle of the room, and all manner of
queer appliances, frames of ground glass, tubes of glass blown into
extraordinary shapes, a dynamo, and a lot of other things all about. A
couple of doctors were there too, and Benlian was talking to them. "We'll try my hand first," Benlian said by-and-by. He advanced to the couch, and put his hand under one of the frames of
ground glass. One of the doctors did something in a corner. A harsh
crackling filled the room, and an unearthly, fluorescent light shot and
flooded across the frame where Benlian's hand was. The two doctors
looked, and then started back. One of them gave a cry. He was sickly
white. "Put me on the couch," said Benlian. I and the doctor who was not ill lifted him on the canvas stretcher. The
green-gleaming frame of fluctuating light was passed over the whole of
his body. Then the doctor ran to a telephone and called a colleague....

We spent the morning there, with dozens of doctors coming and going. Then
we left. All the way home in the cab Benlian chuckled to himself. "That scared 'em, Pudgie!" he chuckled. "A man they can't X-ray--that
scared 'em! We must put that down in the diary--"

"Wasn't it ripping!" I chuckled back. He kept a sort of diary or record. He gave it to me afterwards, but
they've borrowed it. It was as big as a ledger, and immensely valuable,
I'm sure; they oughtn't to borrow valuable things like that and not
return them. The laughing that Benlian and I have had over that diary! It fooled them all--the clever X-ray men, the artists of the academies,
everybody! Written on the fly-leaf was "_To My Pudgie_." I shall publish
it when I get it back again. Benlian had now got frightfully weak; it's awfully hard work, passing
yourself. And he had to take a little milk now and then or he'd have
died before he had quite finished. I didn't bother with miniatures any
longer, and when angry letters came from my employers we just put them
into the fire, Benlian and I, and we laughed--that is to say, I laughed,
but Benlian only smiled, being too weak to laugh really. He'd lots of
money, so that was all right; and I slept in his studio, to be there for
the passing. And that wouldn't be very long now, I thought; and I was always looking
at the statue. Things like that (in case you don't know) have to be done
gradually, and I supposed he was busy filling up the inside of it and
hadn't got to the outside yet--for the statue was much the same to look
at. But, reckoning off his sips of milk and snatches of sleep, he was
making splendid progress, and the figure must be getting very full now. I was awfully excited, it was getting so near....

And then somebody came bothering and nearly spoiling all. It's odd, but I
really forget exactly what it was.