--not to
discuss her feelings or her relation to you with anybody, now that she
is to be your wife. I should think you would see that for yourself,
Gerald. I should think you would see that Althea would not marry you if
she thought that you were capable of talking her over with me.'

Gerald had flushed deeply and vividly. 'But Helen--with _you_!' he
murmured. It was a helpless appeal, a helpless protest. His whole life
seemed to rise up and confront her with the contrast between their
reality--his relation and hers--and the relative triviality of this new
episode in his life. And there was his error, and there her inexorable
opposition; the episode was one no longer; he must not treat it as
trivial, a matter for mutual musings and conjectures. His 'With you!'
shook Helen's heart; but, looking past him and hard at the fire, she
only moved her head in slow, slight, and final negation.

Gerald was silent for a long time, and she knew that he was gazing at
her as a dog gazes when some inexorable and inexplicable refusal turns
its world to emptiness. And with her pain for his pain came the rising
of old anger and old irony against him; for whose fault was it that even
the bitter joy of perfect freedom was cut off? Who had been so blind as
not to see that a wife must, in common loyalty, bring circumspection and
a careful drawing of limits? Who was it who, in his folly, had not known
that his impulsive acquiescence, his idle acceptance of the established
comfort and order held out to him, had cut away half of their
friendship? Absurd for Gerald, now, to feel reproach and injury. For
when he spoke again it was, though in careful tones, with uncontrollable
reproach. 'You know, Helen, I never expected this. I don't know that I'd
have been able to face this----' He checked himself; already he had
learned something of what was required of him. 'It's like poisoning part
of my life for me.'

Helen did not allow the bitter smile to curl her lips; her inner
rejoinder answered him with: 'Whose fault is it that all my life is
poisoned?'

'After all,' said Gerald, and now with a tremor in his voice, 'an old
friend--a friend like you--a more than sister--is nearer than any new
claims.' She had never heard Gerald's voice break before--for anything
to do with her, at least--and she felt that her cheek whitened in
hearing it; but she was able to answer in the same even tones: 'I don't
think so. No one can be near enough to talk about your