r own first romance
and wondered where the man was now. "But----? Tell me, dear. I shall
quite understand and I am sure you need not feel afraid of me!"

Helena thought deeply. Words were so difficult.

"But----," she said once again; and then, suddenly inspired, she
started rapidly; "Well, it is what you said just now. I--I _must_ live
my own life. I want--I want to grow. I've not grown since I was
fifteen. I felt so silly, like a child, when I was talking to--to Mr.
Brett, and I am twenty now." She said this most imposingly.

"And so," said Mrs. Hallam, trying not to smile, "you want to marry Mr.
Brett because he made you feel so silly when you talked to him?"

Helena flushed, still sensitive to ridicule. "I want to marry Mr.
Brett," she said with dignity, "because he is clever, and being a fool,
I admire cleverness more than anything in the whole world, and I
believe _he'd_ let me expand."

"Do you mean I have kept you back?" asked her mother, in low, earnest
tones. She had accused herself.

"No, you've been splendid." Helena patted her hand. "No girl ever had
such a good mother.... And now you are going to be good about this
too, and not be troublesome and try to keep me here!" She jumped up
and stood facing her, excitement and expectancy.

Mrs. Hallam was suddenly conscious of her weakness.

It had been so easy to be strong when she was dealing with a child--and
she had kept Helena a child. Now, in this moment, she realised that
she was dealing with a woman, a woman of a stronger will. Something,
Mr. Brett perhaps, had altered Helena. Even her way of talking had
changed in an instant.

"Expand" and "troublesome"----! She looked up and saw before her no
longer an obedient child, but a girl almost bursting with the desire to
live at nearly any cost.

Mrs. Hallam was naturally alarmed. She knew that any contest of the
wills was useless. She fell back upon pathos.

"Helena dear," she said weakly, "you're twenty now. I don't want to
dictate to you, to treat you as a child. You have the right, as you
say, to live your own life. But do you think it right," and now her
voice grew very feeble, very plaintive, "after I've done all I have for
you, not to think of me at all?"

"What do you mean?" asked Helena with quite an emphasis upon the second
word. She felt a dim mistrust of this new tone. She had been kindlier
to opposition, for indeed at the moment she almost longed to fight.

M