wife with you.'

He then turned his back and looked for a long time into the fire. She
guessed that there were tears in his eyes, and that he was fighting with
anger, pain, and amazement, and the knowledge filled her with cruel joy
and with a torturing pity. She longed to tell him that she hated him,
and she longed to put her arms around him and to comfort him--comfort
him because he was going to marry some one else, and must be loyal to
the woman preferred as wife. It was she, however, who first recovered
herself. She got up and pinched a withered flower from the fine azalea
that Franklin Kane had sent her the day before, and, dropping it into
the waste-paper basket, she said at last, very resolutely, 'Come,
Gerald, don't be silly.'

He showed her now the face of a miserable, sulky boy, and Helen, smiling
at him, went on: 'We have a great many other subjects of conversation,
you will recollect. We can still talk about all the things we used to
talk about. Sit down, and don't look like that, or I shall be angry with
you.'

She knew her power over him; it was able to deceive him as to their real
situation, and this was to have obeyed pity, not anger. Half unwillingly
he smiled a little, and, rubbing his hand through his hair and sinking
into a chair, he said: 'Laugh at me if you feel like it; I'm ill-used.'

'Terribly ill-used, indeed,' said Helen. 'I shall go on laughing at you
while you are so ridiculous. Now tell me about the ball at the
Fanshawes, and who was there, and who was the prettiest woman in the
room.'

CHAPTER XXI.

Althea had intended to fix the time of her marriage for the end of
November; but, not knowing quite why, she felt on her return to England
that she would prefer a slightly more distant date. It might be foolish
to give oneself more time for uneasy meditation, yet it might be wise to
give oneself more time for feeling the charm. The charm certainly
worked. While Gerald opened his innocent, yet so intelligent eyes,
rallied her on her dejection, called her a dear little goose, and kissed
her in saying it, she had known that however much he might hurt her she
was helplessly in love with him. In telling him that she would marry him
just before Christmas--they were to have their Christmas in the
Riviera--she didn't intend that he should be given more opportunities
for hurting her, but more opportunities for charming her. Helplessly as
she might love, her heart was a tremulously careful