ral to sit under peaceful trees and talk to Mr. Kane,
and it was easy to be perfectly frank with him. Helen answered his
smile. 'No, I'm not. I'm quite absorbed in my own affairs. I'm
interested in hardly anybody. I'm very selfish.'

'Ah, you would find that you wouldn't suffer so--in just your way, I
mean--if you were less selfish,' Franklin Kane remarked.

'What other way is there?' Helen asked. 'What is your way?'

'Well, I don't know that I've found a much better one, our ways seem to
have brought us to pretty much the same place, haven't they,' he almost
mused. 'That's the worst of suffering, it's pretty much alike, at all
times and in all ways. I'm not unselfish either, you know, a mighty long
way from it. But I'm not sick of it, you know, not sick to death of it.
Forgive me if I offend in repeating your words.'

'You are unselfish, I'm sure of that,' said Helen. 'And so you must have
other things to live for. My life is very narrow, and when things I care
about are ruined I see nothing further.'

'Things are never ruined in life, Miss Buchanan. As long as there is
life there is hope and action and love. As long as you can love you
can't be sick to death of it.' Mr. Kane spoke in his deliberate,
monotonous tones.

Helen was silent for a little while. She was wondering; not about Mr.
Kane, nor about his suffering, nor about the oddity of thus talking with
him about her own. It was no more odd to talk to him than if he had been
the warm-hearted dog, dowered for her benefit with speech; she was
wondering about what he said and about that love to which he alluded.
'Perhaps I don't know much about love,' she said, and more to herself
than to Mr. Kane.

'I've inferred that since knowing you,' said Franklin.

'I mean, of course,' Helen defined, 'the selfless love you are talking
of.'

'Yes, I understand,' said Franklin. 'Now, you see, the other sort of
love, the sort that makes people go away and cry in the woods--for I've
been crying because I'm hopelessly in love, Miss Buchanan, and I presume
that you are too--well, that sort of love can't escape ruin sometimes.
That side of life may go to pieces and then there's nothing left for it
but to cry. But that side isn't all life, Miss Buchanan.'

Helen did not repudiate his interpretation of her grief. She was quite
willing that Mr. Kane should know why she had been crying, but she did
not care to talk about that side to him. It had been always, and it
would alwa