returned. She knew the question clamouring in his heart, the question he
must not ask, nor she answer: 'Is he in love with Althea?' Mr. Kane
could never accept nor understand what the qualified answer to such a
question would have to be, and she must leave him with his worst
perplexity unsolved. But one thing she could do for him, and she hoped
that it might soften a little the bitterness of his uncertainty. The
sunlight suddenly had failed, and a slight wind passed among the boughs
overhead. Helen got upon her feet, straightening her hat and putting
back her hair. It was time to be going homewards. They went down the
path and climbed over the palings, and it was on the hill-top that Helen
said, looking far ahead of her, far over the now visible roofs of
Merriston:

'I've known Gerald Digby all my life, and I know Althea, now, quite
well. And if Gerald is to be the lucky man I'd like to say, for him, you
know--and I think it ought to set your mind at rest--that I think Althea
will be quite as lucky as he will be, and that I think that he is worthy
of her.'

Franklin kept his eyes on her as she spoke, and though she did not meet
them, her far gaze, fixed ahead, seemed in its impersonal gravity to
commune with him, for his consolation, more than an answering glance
would have done. She was giving him her word for something, and the very
fact that she kept it impersonal, held it there before them both, made
it more weighty and more final. Franklin evidently found it so. He
presently heaved a sigh in which relief was mingled with
acceptance--acceptance of the fact that, from her, he must expect no
further relief. And presently, as they came out upon the winding road,
he said: 'Thanks, that's very helpful.'

They walked on then in silence. The sun was gone and the wind blew
softly; the freshness of the coming rain was in the air. Helen lifted
her face to them as the first slow drops began to fall. In her heart,
too, the fierceness of her pain was overcast. Something infinitely sad,
yet infinitely peaceful, stilled her pulses. Infinitely sad, yet
infinitely funny too. How small, how insignificant, this tangle of the
whole-hearted and the half-hearted; what did it all come to, and how
feel suffering as tragic when farce grimaced so close beside it? Who
could take it seriously when, in life, the whole-hearted were so
deceived and based their loves on such illusion? To feel the irony was
to acquiesce, perhaps, and acquiescenc