't talk as if it were at an
end. How could our friendship have an end? Don't let me think that you
are leaving me.'

He smiled a little, but it was a valorous smile. 'I'll never leave you
in that way.'

'Don't speak, then, as if I were leaving you.'

But Franklin, though he smiled the valorous smile, couldn't give her a
consolation not his to give. Did he see clearly, and for the first time,
that he had always counted for her as a solace, a substitute for the
things he couldn't be, and that now, when these things had come to her,
he counted really for nothing at all? If he did see it, he didn't resent
it; he would understand that, too, even though it left him with no
foothold in her life. But he couldn't pretend--to give her comfort--that
she needed him any longer. 'I want to count for anything you'll let me
count for,' he said; 'but--it isn't your fault, dear--I don't think I
will ever count for much, now; I don't see how I can. If that's being
left, I guess I am left.'

She gazed at him, and all that she had to offer was her longing that the
truth were not the truth, and for the moment of silent confrontation her
pain was so great that its pressure brought an involuntary cry--protest
or presage--it felt like both. 'You will--you will count--for much more,
dear Franklin.'

She didn't know that it was the truth; his seemed to be the final truth;
but it came, and it had to be said, and he could accept it as her
confession and her atonement.

CHAPTER XVII.

Franklin was gone and Sir Charles was gone, and Lady Pickering soon
followed, not in the least discomfited by the unexpected turn of events.
Lady Pickering could hardly have borne to suspect that Gerald preferred
to flirt with Miss Jakes rather than with herself; that he preferred to
marry her was nothing of an affront. Althea herself was very soon to
return to America for a month with Aunt Julia and the girls, settle
business matters and see old friends before turning her face, this time
for good, to the country that was now to be her home.

Franklin was gone, and Gerald and Helen were left, and all that Gerald
more and more meant, all that was bright and alien too--the things of
joy and the things of adjustment and of wonder--effaced poor Franklin
while it emphasised those painful truths that he had seen and shown her
and that she had only been able to protest against. The thought of
Franklin came hardly at all, though the truths he had put before h