her. She felt by instinct that she must make herself deaf and blind to any hint of sweetness in her life, lest she should recover her waking senses and find it gone or turned to bitterness like all the rest of the things that life had given her. She feared nothing more for herself than this, because this alone was quite enough for her to fear. Nay, if she thought-so she felt-her half-known friend might turn out to be merely as selfish and as self-seeking as his fellows: and she clung to her last illusion, telling herself that it might be no more, but refusing to part with it while a thread of it might hold together.

At first Gideon's prolonged absence seemed natural enough, considering his character. His grand coups, as Victor knew even better than Helen, had often been preceded by a long course of swimming under water. Before coming to the surface he had always dived. After a while, however, it began to wear something of the character of a mystery. Could it be that he had meant to desert his wife, as well as to slip away from his strangely indifferent creditors? He must be conscious of her want of love for him; he could notso Victor fancied—have loved in any sense a woman whom he had won by deliberate treachery: she could only be a burden upon him in any new adventure. If he had deserted her, the last link that bound her to him had surely gone. What was left but a shadow— so Victor argued-between her and any true marriage that might come to her? Surely life, peace, comfort, not impossible happiness, were never meant to be baulked because there was a Gideon Skull alive in some unknown part of the world! Reason itself had turned traitor, and had gone over to the other side.

Victor knew now that he neither merely pitied nor only sympathised with her any more, but that he simply loved her with all his heart, as surely as that he breathed. He desired her good above all things; but it was now in the way that makes us desire the good of another because hers, or his, is our own; and which, moreover, makes us but too often mistake what we fancy to be our own good for theirs. He still knew he was drifting; but the shoals ahead looked green and fair, and he no longer felt his own need to shape his own course with sail and oar. How could he leave her now, he asked, when she needed him, without being the most selfish of cowards? But he knew all the time that he would have found some equally good reason for not leaving her, even had she not needed him. Only, to this last piece of knowledge he blinded his eyes as much as she, to another piece, was blinding hers.

Love was surely not the less because it had come into his heart like the consciousness of thunder before the storm. One day he

came to her as usual, without any sort of word to say to her after he had taken her hand. Everything seemed to have been said that could be said, except the first and last word of all. Nor did she break the silence. She never had the heart to speak of small things, and even she was wearying of her own eternal "I" and "Me." Nothing was to be said of every-day matters that had not been already said a hundred times. And he felt as if, were he henceforth to call upon Helen every day for fifty years, his power of speech would grow less and less, unless some sudden moment were to strike from him the one word which alone he had to say to her. It was strange to him that all the self-consciousness should seem to be on his own side, and that silence did not seem any burden to her. He had come to her, as usual, without any plan of speech, and he could form none now. But something he must say. Silence itself began to feel too much like the speech which he had not planned.

"I was thinking" he said at last-meaning both much and nothing.

"Of what I ought to do?" asked she.

soon."

"Yes and no

"I must do something

I was thinking of that and of other things besides. One thinks of what can be; but one can't help thinking of what might have been, too."

"Of what might have been? No.

There is no use in thinking

if we

of anything but what can be."

"We can make the two agree, though, sometimes are not afraid. It seems to me that nothing can ever be, unless we take our own lives into our own hands, and do not let ourselves be blown about by other people's lives, like straws by the wind. I was wondering, and I was thinking too."

"I have given up wondering long ago."

"I was wondering-for example-if Victor Waldron is not quite so black as he is painted: if you and he had met as other cousins meet, both free and both heart-whole

"I am wondering what would happen if the skies were to fall. I dare say, if he had wanted to marry me, I should have married him for the sake of Copleston, just as I married Gideon Skull

"For the sake of self-sacrifice for others. Helen, never let me hear you speak of yourself like that again And as for this Waldron-how do you know that you judge him rightly when you judge yourself so wrongly? How do you know that he may not be feeling Copleston a curse, since it came to him by another's wrong? I know how I should feel

"I don't think I misjudge him. I did once, because I did not know what men are when there is a chance of their getting money or land. Gideon Skull would have done just the same. Why should I think worse of Victor Waldron than of others? I don't, indeed."

"And you think there is nothing I would not do for money or

land?"

"How can I tell till I have seen you tried?"

"You are frank. . . . . Well, let it be so. Helen-I believed in Alan; and I believe in hundreds, thousands more. What would you say if Victor Waldron implored you to relieve him of Copleston as from a curse?"

"If he found it a curse, I should think justice had for once been done. But I would not take what is not my own. I could do so much for Alan still."

"Yes-Alan.

There is one man, you see, who put a great many things before gold and land. And, if one, why not many more ?"

"Alan died young."

"Helen! For God's sake, whomever you wrong, don't wrong

him!"

"And whom am I wronging?"

"Him, and yourself, and me, and half the world. You think that your life is broken, and you show how strong it is by exaggerating everything you think and feel. You fancy you are coldly logical, and you judge of a whole world, where no two men or women are alike in anything, from the one or two who happen to be nearest you at the time. You commit follies like the rest of us, and imagine them to be sins. You are quivering with life, and mistake for death the pains that can only be felt by nerves that are intensely alive. Your heart is hungry and thirsty, and you try to cure famine by starving. You"

"Why are you always so hard on me?"

Why? For the best reason on earth-because you are dearer to me than the whole world. That is why; and you know it in your heart as well as I do in mine. But-hard on you-when I love you! Oh, Helen, don't you understand?"

Helen turned white and crimson, hot and cold.

"You-you-say that--to Me?"

"I, to you. Yes, with my whole heart and soul. I did not mean to say it to you to-day. ... But it must have come to-morrow, or next day, or in a year; it must have come. .. How can I help loving you? If you don't believe that, there is nothing left you

to believe. Love may help you, Helen. If it is only for that, I am glad I love you; but it is not for that-I love you because I do, and I am glad because I am."

He did not approach her, or even hold out his hand for hers. He only stood before her, pale and still, and with eyes that seemed defying fate, with the look that went straight from his to hers. He was desperately in earnest, and he had made her trust him long ago-for what had come to seem, to both of them, ages ago. As for her, she could believe her ears. She felt life melting back into her. She had never known love; yet Love did not come to her as a stranger

comes.

"I don't ask you for your love," said he, "but we can't go on playing the farce of my being only your friend. I am tired of all the lies we are living-every one of us, all round. I want to claim the right to help you in all ways, great and small. A woman may take all things from a man who loves her, as I love you. Yes, if it is only in the name of what might have been," he said, putting his hand out for a semblance of reason, and catching hold of some sort of a straw. "I have said it. No-don't say one word to me, unless you please; except 'Help me; for, since you love me, you can.""

Helen's throat swelled, and her eyes filled with tears. She felt that her woman's fate had come-and Now.

Not for one instant did she feel that there was room for unfaith towards Gideon Skull. She had thrown off her marriage with her ring. She could not think of herself as otherwise than free. Something had been saved out of the wreck of life; if nothing more was to happen to her until she died, she had been told that she was loved in the very voice of Truth itself, and had therefore not been made a woman altogether in vain. But her first conscious thought was a strange one, nor can any pretend to tell how or whence it came. "Would Bertha have felt like me, if Alan had lived to tell her he loved her? Poor'girl!"

"Show that you forgive me," said Victor, "by saying 'Help me all you can.' For I can, now."

He held out his hand at last, but almost humbly, and scarcely as if seeking hers. But the very reticence and reserve of his gesture had a dignity of its own, and made it seem a command rather than a doubtful prayer. Hers went to it as naturally as to a home, but with a trembling touch that thrilled him through. "Yes-help me!" said she.

He scarcely knew what was happening any more, now that he was holding her hand and could read her soul in her eyes. This was

infinitely more than he had ever dreamed-and yet, was it not the only natural end? He stooped and kissed the hand that trembled in his; though it trembled hardly more than his own. He even forgot that she did not know of him so much as her lover's name.

....

"Helen, dearest Helen," he said at last, as he still held her hand, "there is one true, great thing in life for you now. . . . . And for me! . . . ." There was no need to speak now; and a whirl of plans rushed through his mind, or rather through his heart; for his mind had little to do with his will any more. She was thinking him strong and brave, as a woman always thinks that man to be who is weaker than water, so long as his weakness is hers. And he was thinking himself no less; for what does any man believe more strongly than a woman's thoughts of him, so long as they flatter him? She should never learn that he was Victor Waldron instead of Walter Gray. He would sell Copleston. He would begin life again, with new aims and under a new name. He would take her anywhere she pleased,

so long as it was neither England nor America. There were twenty countries where they, whom nobody knew, could live in all honour. If Gideon chose to sue for a divorce, all the better; if not, Helen had divorced herself already. They could live in Venice, or in Vienna, or even in Paris, where Alan had died—

All at once there rose up a ghost from the grave. Was this the life he was planning for the sister of his dead friend-for whose sake he had sworn himself her true brother and knight for ever?

The hand turned cold that dropped hers, and his heart felt numbed. There she stood before him, ready to come into his arms, if so he willed. And he knew that his whole life had turned into love for her. But what sort of love was it that was preparing for Alan's brotherless sister a life of shame and sin! He could only turn aside and bury his face in his hands to shut out the sight of the accusing ghost that stood between him and her, and was saying, "Victor-I trusted you!"

"What is it ?—what has happened?" cried she. "What have I said?-what have I done?"

"Helen," he said slowly and sadly, as he lifted his eyes again to hers, "I do love you. That cannot be unsaid or undone.

to think of what might have been! You are a wife

"No!"

. . . Oh,

....

"You are Alan's sister-and mine; for he was my friend. Oh, Helen, don't you see what stands between you and me? . . . . I cannot help loving you, it is my fate; but you have no right—I have none. . . . . Helen, there was one man I once knew who put