stood. He rested in that fact, without in the
least comprehending his own lack of comprehension.

Moving close to him, she laid both hands upon his shoulders, hiding her
face in silence against his breast.

He stroked her soft hair--helplessly, tenderly.

With his whole heart he loved her, leaned upon her, needed her. She had
done everything for him; been everything to him.

But he meant to carry his point. He intended to go to Central Africa,
and it was no sort of good pretending he did not. You never pretended
with Helen, because she saw through you immediately, and usually told
you so.

He had not spent a single night away from her since that wonderful day
when, calm and radiant, she had moved up the church in presence of an
admiring crowd, and taken her place at his side.

He was practically unknown then, as a writer. No one but Helen believed
in him, or understood what he had it in him to accomplish. Whereas Helen
herself was the last representative of an ancient County family, owner
of Hollymead Grange, and of a considerable income; courted, admired,
sought after. Yet she gave herself to him, in humble tenderness. Helen
had a royal way of giving. The very way she throned you in her heart,
dropped you on one knee before her footstool.

He had fully justified her belief in him; but he well knew how much of
his success he owed to her. Their love had taught him lessons, given him
ideals which had not been his before.

But there was nothing selfish or sentimental about Helen. When the most
sacred of their experiences crept into his work, and stood revealed for
all the world to read; when his art transferred to hard type, and to the
black and white of print and paper, the magic thrill of Helen's
tenderness, so that all her friends could buy it for four shillings and
sixpence, and discuss it at leisure, Helen never winced. She only smiled
and said: "The world has a right to every beautiful thing we can give
it. I have always felt indignant with the people who collect musical
instruments which they have no intention of playing; who lock up Strads
and Cremonas in glass cases, thus holding them dumb for ever to the
eager ear of a listening world."

Only once, when he had put into a story a tender little name by which
Helen sometimes called him, unable to resist giving his hero the bliss
he, on those rare occasions, himself felt--he found a firm pencil line
drawn through the words, when he looked at the proof sheet