ranks of the middle-aged. He had read her thought in her
great scornful eyes. "What has your generation to do with mine? Your
day is over!"

And all the while the ugly truth was that he had never had his "day"--and
was likely now to miss it for good. Or at least such "day" as had shone
upon him had been so short, so chequered, so tragically wiped out, it
might as well never have dawned. Yet the one dear woman friend to whom in
these latter years he had spoken freely, who knew him through and
through--Helena Pitstone's mother--had taken for granted, in her quiet
ascetic way, that he had indeed had his chance, and must accept for good
and all what had come of it. It was because she thought of him as set
apart, as debarred by what had happened to him, from honest love-making,
and protected by his own nature from anything less, that she had asked
him to take charge of Helena. He realized it now. It had been the notion
of a fanciful idealist, springing from certain sickroom ideas of
sacrifice--renunciation--submission to the will of God--and so forth.

It was _not_ the will of God!--that he should live forsaken and die
forlorn! He hurled defiance, even at Rachel, his dear dead friend, who
had been so full of pity for him, and for whom he had felt the purest and
most unselfish affection he had ever known--since his mother's death.

And now the presence of her child in his house seemed to represent a
verdict, a sentence--of hers upon him, which he simply refused to accept
as just or final. If Rachel had only lived a little longer he would have
had it out with her. But in those last terrible days, how could he either
argue--or refuse?

All the same, he would utterly do his duty by Helena. If she chose to
regard him as an old fogy, well and good--it was perhaps better so. Not
that--if circumstances had been other than they were---he would have been
the least inclined to make love to her. Her beauty was astonishing. But
the wonderful energy and vitality of her crude youth rather repelled than
attracted him.

The thought of the wrestles ahead of him was a weariness to an already
tired man. Debate with her, on all the huge insoluble questions she
seemed to be determined to raise, was of all things in the world most
distasteful to him. He would certainly cut a sorry figure in it; nothing
was more probable.

The rain began to plash down upon his face and bared head, cooling an
inner fever. The damp wood, the soft continuous dri