ould hold in her hands,
she went into the house and returned with her embroidery. But he was not
interested in her embroidery; he did not even look at it.

"About Miss Vinrace," he began,--"oh, look here, do let's be St. John
and Helen, and Rachel and Terence--what's she like? Does she reason,
does she feel, or is she merely a kind of footstool?"

"Oh no," said Helen, with great decision. From her observations at
tea she was inclined to doubt whether Hirst was the person to educate
Rachel. She had gradually come to be interested in her niece, and fond
of her; she disliked some things about her very much, she was amused by
others; but she felt her, on the whole, a live if unformed human being,
experimental, and not always fortunate in her experiments, but with
powers of some kind, and a capacity for feeling. Somewhere in the
depths of her, too, she was bound to Rachel by the indestructible if
inexplicable ties of sex. "She seems vague, but she's a will of her
own," she said, as if in the interval she had run through her qualities.

The embroidery, which was a matter for thought, the design being
difficult and the colours wanting consideration, brought lapses into the
dialogue when she seemed to be engrossed in her skeins of silk, or, with
head a little drawn back and eyes narrowed, considered the effect of
the whole. Thus she merely said, "Um-m-m" to St. John's next remark, "I
shall ask her to go for a walk with me."

Perhaps he resented this division of attention. He sat silent watching
Helen closely.

"You're absolutely happy," he proclaimed at last.

"Yes?" Helen enquired, sticking in her needle.

"Marriage, I suppose," said St. John.

"Yes," said Helen, gently drawing her needle out.

"Children?" St. John enquired.

"Yes," said Helen, sticking her needle in again. "I don't know why I'm
happy," she suddenly laughed, looking him full in the face. There was a
considerable pause.

"There's an abyss between us," said St. John. His voice sounded as if
it issued from the depths of a cavern in the rocks. "You're infinitely
simpler than I am. Women always are, of course. That's the difficulty.
One never knows how a woman gets there. Supposing all the time you're
thinking, 'Oh, what a morbid young man!'"

Helen sat and looked at him with her needle in her hand. From
her position she saw his head in front of the dark pyramid of a
magnolia-tree. With one foot raised on the rung of a chair, and her
elbow out in the