d not revive her; it did
not lift and glorify her; rather it subjugated her and held her helpless
and in thrall. She was not crowned with beams; rather, it seemed to her
in moments of dizzy insight, dragged at chariot wheels. And more than
once her pride revolted as she was whirled along.

It was at Merriston, installed, apparently, so happily with her friends,
that the second group of impressions became clearer for her than it had
been in London, when she had herself made part of it--the group that had
to do with Helen, Franklin, and herself. In London, among all the wider
confusions, this smaller but more intense one had not struck her as it
did seeing it from a distance. Perhaps it had been because Franklin,
among all that glided, had been the raft she stood upon, that, in his
company, she had not felt to the full how changed was their relation.
His devotion to her was unchanged; of that she was sure. Franklin had
not altered; it was she who had altered, and she had now to look at him
from the new angle where her own choice had placed her. Seen from this
angle it was clear that Franklin could no longer offer just the same
devotion, however truly he might feel it; she had barred that out; and
it was also clear that he would continue to offer the devotion that she
had left it open to him to offer; but here came the strange
confusion--this devotion, this remnant, this all that could still be
given, hardly differed in practice from the friendship now so frankly
bestowed upon Helen as well as upon herself; and, for a further
strangeness, Franklin, whom she had helplessly seen as passing from her
life, no longer counting in it, was not gone at all; he was there,
indeed, as never before, with the background of his sudden millions to
give him significance. Franklin was, indeed, as firmly ensconced in this
new life that she had entered as he chose to be, and did he not, as a
matter of fact, count in it for more than she did? If it was confusing
to look at Franklin from the angle of her own withdrawal, what was it to
see him altered, for the world, from drab to rose-colour and to see
that people were running after him? This fantastic result of wealth,
Althea, after a stare or two, was able to accept with other ironic
acceptations; it was not indeed London's vision of Franklin that altered
him for her, though it confused her; no, what had altered him more than
anything she could have thought possible, was Helen's new seeing of h