new how he
had treated her. She should not have an instant's mortification in my
presence. But she might just see, without being told, that I loved her
through it all."

He even rose, and began to study a time-table; but he frowned a little
and put it down, and went and looked out of the window a while. "Helen
would be more unhappy if she thought I were not here to look after Ward.
Yes, I must wait till he gets stronger. Perhaps next month"--

Then, shaking himself together, with a revulsion of common sense, "As she
is unhappy, she won't care whether I'm there or not, or may be she'd
rather I wasn't!"

Yet, though he could not easily subdue the desire to rush to Ashurst, the
thought that Helen's sorrow would be a little greater if she could not
think of him as near her husband, helped to keep him at his post.

But it might have been good for Helen to have had the young man's frank
and healthy understanding of her position. She was growing every day more
lonely and self-absorbed; she was losing her clear perceptions of the
values of life; she became warped, and prejudiced, and very silent. She
even fancied, with a morbid self-consciousness which would have been
impossible before, that she had never possessed the love of her uncle and
cousin, and had always been an alien. This subtile danger to her generous
nature was checked in an unexpected way.

One afternoon, late in September, she went as usual, alone, to the
graveyard on East Hill. The blue haze lay like a ribbon through the
valley and across the hills; the air was still, and full of the pungent
fragrance of burning brush, and yellow leaves rustled about her feet. The
faded grass had been beaten down by the rain, and was matted above the
graves; here and there a frosted weed stood straight and thin against the
low soft sky; some late golden-rod blazed along the edge of the meadow
among the purple asters, and a single stalk of cardinal flowers flashed
out beside the lichen-covered wall; but all the rest of the world was a
blur of yellow and gray. Helen sat down on a stone, and listened to the
small wood sounds around her. A beech leaf, twisted like the keel of a
fantastic boat, came pattering down on the dead leaves; a bird stirred in
the pine behind her, and now and then a cricket gave a muffled chirp.

It was here Mr. Dale found her, her head resting forlornly on her hands;
she was absently watching a gray squirrel who had ventured from his cover
in the wall,