re I found you, the acknowledged queen of American
actresses, I would do it. But I am helpless. I shall not speak or
write to you again till I can come with some gift in my hand--some
recompense for your losses through me. I have been a malign
influence in your life. I am in mad despair when I think of you
playing to cold and empty houses. I am going back to the West to
do sash factories and wheat elevators; these are my _metier_. You
are the one to grant pardon; I am the malefactor. I am taking
myself out of your world. Forgive me and--forget me. Hugh was
right. My very presence is a curse to you. Good-bye."

XVII

This letter came to Helen with her coffee, and the reading of it blotted
out the glory of the morning, filling her eyes with smarting tears. It
put a sudden ache into her heart, a fierce resentment. At the moment his
assumed humbleness, his self-derision, his confession of failure
irritated her.

"I don't want you to bend and bow," she thought, as if speaking to him.
"I'd rather you were fierce and hard, as you were last night." She read
on to the end, so deeply moved that she could scarcely see the lines.
Her resentment melted away and a pity, profound and almost maternal,
filled her heart. "Poor boy! What could Hugh have said to him! I will
know. It has been a bitter experience for him. And is this the end of
our good days?"

With this internal question a sense of vital loss took hold upon her.
For the first time in her life the future seemed desolate and her past
futile. Back upon her a throng of memories came rushing--memories of the
high and splendid moments they had spent together. First of all she
remembered him as the cold, stern, handsome stranger of that first
night--that night when she learned that his coldness was assumed, his
sternness a mask. She realized once again that at this first meeting he
had won her by his voice, by his hand-clasp, by the swiftness and fervor
of his speech; he had dominated her, swept her from her feet.

And now this was the end of all their plans, their dreams of conquest.
There could be no doubt of his meaning in this letter: he had cut
himself off from her, perversely, bitterly, in despair and deep
humiliation. She did not doubt his ability to keep his word. There was
something inexorable in him. She had felt it before--a sort of blind,
self-torturing obstinacy which would keep him to his vow though he bled
f