at you do, you will go just the same.' Then as I stood
hesitating, a thousand memories overwhelming me in an instant, she added
in a voice to tear the heart, 'Do not make me hate the only being left
in this world who understands and loves me.'

"She was a helpless invalid, and I a broken man, but when that word
'love' fell from her lips, I felt the blood start burning in my veins,
and all the crust of habit and years of self-control loosen about my
heart, and make me young again. What if her thoughts were dark and her
wishes murderous! She was born to rule and sway men to her will even to
their own undoing."

"'I wish I might kiss your hand,' was what I murmured, gazing at her
white fingers groping over her tray.

"'You may,' she answered, and hell became heaven to me for a brief
instant. Then I lifted myself and went obediently about my task.

"But puppet though I was, I was not utterly without sympathy. When I
entered Helena's room and saw how her startled eyes fell shrinkingly on
the bowl I set down before her, my conscience leaped to life and I could
not help saying:

"'Don't you like the curds, Helena? Your brother used to love them very
much.'

"'His were--'

"'What, Helena?'

"'What these are not,' she murmured.

"I stared at her, terror-stricken. So she knew, and yet did not seize
the bowl and empty it out of the window! Instead, her hand moved slowly
towards it and drew it into place before her.

"'Yet I must eat,' she said, lifting her eyes to mine in a sort of
patient despair, which yet was without accusation.

"But my hand had instinctively gone to hers and grasped it.

"'Why must you eat it?' I asked. 'If--if you do not find it wholesome,
why do you touch it?'

"'Because my step-mother expects me to,' she cried, 'and I have no other
will than hers. When I was a little, little child, my father made me
promise that if I ever came to live with her I would obey her simplest
wish. And I always have. I will not disappoint the trust he put in me.'

"'Even if you die of it?'

"I do not know whether I whispered these words or only thought them. She
answered as though I had spoken.

"'I am not afraid to die. I am more afraid to live. She may ask me some
day to do something I feel to be wrong.'

"When I fled down the hall that night, I heard one of the small clocks
speak to me. Tell! it cried, tell! tell! tell! tell! I rushed away from
it with beaded forehead and rising hair.

"Then another's n