flame--anger because of what she was
doing to her only son.

For Jim had changed; and it was love for this woman that had changed
him--which had made of him the silent, listless man whose grey face
haunted his mother's dreams.

That he, dissipating all her hopes of him, had fallen in love with
Palla Dumont was enough unhappiness, it seemed; but that this girl
should have found it possible to refuse him--that seemed to Helen a
monstrous thing.

And even were Jim able to forget the girl and free himself from this
exasperating unhappiness which almost maddened his mother, still she
must always afterward remember with bitterness the girl who had
rejected her only son.

Not since Palla had telephoned on that unfortunate night had she or
Helen ever mentioned Jim. The mother, expecting his obsession to wear
itself out, had been only too glad to approve the rupture.

But recently, at moments, her courage had weakened when, evening after
evening, she had watched her son where he sat so silent, listless, his
eyes dull and remote and the book forgotten on his knees.

A steady resentment for all this change in her son possessed Helen,
varied by flashes of impulse to seize Palla and shake her into
comprehension of her responsibility--of her astounding stupidity,
perhaps.

Not that she wanted her for a daughter-in-law. She wanted Elorn. But
now she was beginning to understand that it never would be Elorn
Sharrow. And--save when the change in Jim worried her too deeply--she
remained obstinately determined that he should not bring this girl
into the Shotwell family.

And the amazing paradox was revealed in the fact that Palla fascinated
her; that she believed her to be as fine as she was perverse; as
honest as she was beautiful; as spiritually chaste as she knew her to
be mentally and bodily untainted by anything ignoble.

This, and because Palla was the woman to whom her son's unhappiness
was wholly due, combined to exercise an uncanny fascination on Helen,
so that she experienced a constant and haunting desire to be near the
girl, where she could see her and hear her voice.

At moments, even, she experienced a vague desire to intervene--do
something to mitigate Jim's misery--yet realising all the while she
did not desire Palla to relent.

* * * * *

As for Palla, she was becoming too deeply worried over the darkening
aspects of life to care what Helen thought, even if she had