ys be, she feared, all life to her. She looked sombrely before
her into the green vistas.

'Of course,' Franklin went on, 'I don't know anything about your
hopeless love affair. I'm only sure that your tragedy is a noble one and
that you are up to it, you know--as big as it is. If it's hopeless, it's
not, I'm sure, because of anything in you. It's because of fate, or
circumstance, or some unworthiness in the person you care for. Now with
me one of the hardest things to bear is the fact that I've nothing to
blame but myself. I'm not adequate, that's the trouble; no charm, you
see,' Mr. Kane again almost mused, 'no charm. Charm is the great thing,
and it means more than it seems to mean, all evolution, the survival of
the fittest--natural selection--is in it, when you come to think of it.
If I'd had charm, personality, or, well, greatness of some sort, I'd
have probably won Althea long ago. You know, of course, that it's Althea
I'm in love with, and have been for years and years. Well, there it is,'
Franklin was picking tall blades of grass that grew in a little tuft
near by and putting them neatly together as he spoke. 'There it is, but
even with the pain of just that sort of failure to bear, I don't intend
that my life shall be ruined. It can't be, by the loss of that hope. I'm
not good enough for Althea. I've got to accept that; natural selection
rejects me,' looking up from his grass blades he smiled gravely at his
companion; 'but I'm good enough for other beautiful things that need
serving. And I'm good enough to go on being Althea's friend, to be of
some value to her in that capacity. So my life isn't ruined, not by a
long way, and I wish you'd try to feel the same about yours.'

Helen didn't feel in the least inclined to try, but she found herself
deeply interested in Mr. Kane's attitude; for the first time Mr. Kane
had roused her intent interest. She looked hard at him while he sat
there, demonstrating to her the justice of life's dealings with him and
laying one blade of grass so accurately against another, and she was
wondering now about him. It was not because she thought her own feelings
sacred that she preferred them to be concealed, but she saw that Mr.
Kane's were no less sacred to him for being thus unconcealed. She even
guessed that his revelation of feeling was less for his personal relief
than for her personal benefit; that he was carrying out, in all the
depths of his sincerity, a wish to comfort her,