insignificant--mighty hard,' and as Miss
Buchanan looked mystified, he was going on to demonstrate to her that
to do the work of the world was every human creature's highest
privilege, when Helen entered.

Franklin, as he rose and saw his friend again, had a new impression of
her and a rather perturbing one. Little versed as he was in the lore of
the world--the world in Miss Buchanan's sense--he felt that Helen,
perhaps, expressed what Miss Buchanan could not prove. It was true, her
lovely, recondite personality seemed to flash it before him, she didn't
fit easily into his theories of efficiency and self-development by
effort. Effort--other people's effort--seemed to have done long ago all
that was necessary for her. She was developed, she was finished, she
seemed to belong to quite another order of things from that which he
believed in, to an order framed for her production, as it were, and
justified, perhaps, by her mere existence. She was like a flower, and
ought a flower to be asked to do more than to show itself and bloom in
silence?

Franklin hardly formulated these heresies; they hovered, only, as a sort
of atmosphere that had its charm and yet its sadness too, and that
seemed, in charm and sadness, to be part of Helen Buchanan's very being.

She had taken his hand and was looking at him with those eyes of distant
kindness--so kind and yet so distant--and she said in the voice that was
so sincere and so decisive, a voice sweet and cold as a mountain brook,
that she was very glad to see him again.

Yes, she was like a flower, a flower removed immeasurably from his
world; a flower in a crystal vase, set on a high and precious cabinet,
and to be approached only over stretches of shining floor. What had he
to do with, or to think of, such a young woman who, though
poverty-stricken, looked like a princess, and who, though smiling, had
at her heart, he knew, a despair of life?

'I'm very glad indeed to see you,' he said gravely, despite himself, and
scanning her face; 'it seems a very long time.'

'Does that mean that you have been doing a great deal?'

'Yes; and I suppose it means that I've missed you a great deal, too,'
said Franklin. 'I got into the habit of you at Merriston; I feel it's
queer not to find you in a chair under a tree every day.'

'I know,' said Helen; 'one gets so used to people at country houses;
it's seeing them at breakfast that does it, I think. It was nice under
that tree, wasn't it? a