ly. But Helen did not see her--she was sitting down now, pulling
at the books on the table. She was confused and disturbed by emotions
which were quite strange to her, and when Marion bade her good-by she
hardly noticed her departure. What impressed her most of all in what
Marion had told her, was, she was surprised to find, that Philip was
going away. That she herself had frequently urged him to do so, for his
own peace of mind, seemed now of no consequence. Now that he seriously
contemplated it, she recognized that his absence meant to her a change
in everything. She felt for the first time the peculiar place he held
in her life. Even if she had seen him but seldom, the fact that he was
within call had been more of a comfort and a necessity to her than she
understood.

That he was poor, concerned her chiefly because she knew that, although
this condition could only be but temporary, it would distress him not to
have his friends around him, and to entertain them as he had been used
to do. She wondered eagerly if she might offer to help him, but a second
thought assured her that, for a man, that sort of help from a woman was
impossible.

She resented the fact that Marion was deep in his confidence; that it
was Marion who had told her of his changed condition and of his plans.
It annoyed her so acutely that she could not remain in the room where
she had seen her so complacently in possession. And after leaving a
brief note for Philip, she went away. She stopped a hansom at the door,
and told the man to drive along the Embankment--she wanted to be quite
alone, and she felt she could see no one until she had thought it all
out, and had analyzed the new feelings.

So for several hours she drove slowly up and down, sunk far back in
the cushions of the cab, and staring with unseeing eyes at the white
enamelled tariff and the black dash-board.

She assured herself that she was not jealous of Marion, because, in
order to be jealous, she first would have to care for Philip in the very
way she could not bring herself to do.

She decided that his interest in Marion hurt her, because it showed that
Philip was not capable of remaining true to the one ideal of his life.
She was sure that this explained her feelings--she was disappointed that
he had not kept up to his own standard; that he was weak enough to turn
aside from it for the first pretty pair of eyes. But she was too honest
and too just to accept that diagnosis of her f