n
not quite the same way that most people affixed theirs, ridiculously
endeared even his envelopes. She turned the note over in her fingers as
she stood before the fire, seeing all that it meant to him--how
little!--and all that it meant to her, and she laid it for a moment
against her cheek before tearing it across and putting it, too, into the
fire. Aunt Grizel was gone out and had left word that she would not be
in till dinner-time. Helen looked idly at the clock and decided that she
would take a lazy afternoon, have tea at home, and await Franklin.

When he arrived he found her reading before the fire in the little room
where she did not often receive him; it was usually in the drawing-room
that they met. Helen wore a black tea-gown, transparent and flowing, the
same gown, indeed, remodelled to more domestic uses, in which Althea had
first seen her. She looked pale and very thin.

Franklin, too, was aware of feeling pale; he thought that he had felt
pale ever since his talk with Miss Buchanan on Saturday. He had not yet
come to any decision about the motives that had made him acquiesce in
her proposal; he only knew that, whatever they were, they were not those
merely reasonable ones that she had put before him. A charming wife, a
home and children; these were not enough, and Franklin knew it, to have
brought him here to-day on his strange errand; nor was it an act of
chivalry; nor was it pity and sympathy for his friend. All these, no
doubt, made some small part of it; but they far from covered the case;
they would have left him as calm and as rational as, he knew, he looked;
but since he did not feel calm and rational he knew that the case was
covered by very different motives. What they were he could not clearly
see; but he felt that something was happening to him and that it was
taking him far out of his normal course. Even his love for Althea had
not taken him out of his course; it had never been incalculable; it had
been the ground he walked on, the goal he worked towards; what was
happening now was like a current, swift and unfathomable, that was
bearing him he knew not where.

Helen smiled at him and, turning in her chair to look up at him, gave
him her hand. 'You look tired,' she said. 'You'll have some tea?'

'I've been looking up some things at the British Museum,' said Franklin,
'and I had a glass of milk and a bun; the bun was very satisfying,
though I can't say that it was very satisfactory; I guess