aker's face. For a moment, forgetting everything,
his resolutions were flung to the winds, and he trembled with passion
and hope. Then he remembered his promise to the sick man, and Helen's
own warning, and recovered a partial mastery of himself. It was a mere
sense of justice which prompted the girl's words, his reason warned
him, but he felt, instinctively, that they implied more than this,
though he did not know how much. He stood irresolute until Helen
looked up, and, if it had ever existed, the time for speech was past.

"I fear I have kept you too long, but there is still a question I must
ask. You have seen my father in many of his moods, and there is
something in the state of limp apathy he occasionally falls into which
puzzles me. I cannot help thinking there is another danger of which I
do not know. Can you not enlighten me?"

Helen leaned forward, a strange fear stamped upon her face. Fresh from
the previous struggle, Geoffrey, whose heart yearned to comfort her,
felt his powers of resistance strained to the utmost. Still, it was a
question that he could not answer. Remembering Savine's injunction--to
hold her father's name clean--he said quickly: "There is nothing I can
tell you. You must remember only that the physician admitted a
cheering possibility."

"I will try to believe in it." The trouble deepened in Helen's face,
while her voice expressed bitter disappointment. "You have been very
kind and I must not tax you too heavily."

Geoffrey turned away, distressed, for her and inwardly anathematized
his evil fortune in being asked that particular question. He had, he
felt, faltered when almost within sight of victory, neglecting to press
home an advantage which might have won success. "It is, perhaps, the
first time I have willfully thrown away my chances--the man who wins is
the one who sees nothing but the prize," he told himself. "But I could
not have taken advantage of her anxiety for her father and gratitude to
me, while, if I had, and won, there would be always between us the
knowledge that I had not played the game fairly."

Thomas Savine came into the room. "I was looking for you, and want to
know when you'll go down to Vancouver with me to puzzle through
everything before finally deciding just what you're going to do," he
said. They talked a few moments. After the older man left him,
Geoffrey found himself confronted by Mrs. Savine.

"I have been worried about you," she ass