s? How spare and poor and insignificant
were his face and form. Could she love a child who had a nose like
that--a neat, flat, sallow little nose? A spasm, half of laughter, half
of sobbing, caught her breath.

'I've startled you,' said Franklin, who still sat in his chair looking
up at her. 'Please forgive me.'

A further thought came to her now, one that she could utter, was able to
utter. 'I couldn't live in America. Yes, you did startle me. But I am
much honoured.'

'Thank you,' said Franklin. 'I needn't say how much I should consider
myself honoured if you would accept my proposal.' He rose now, but it
was to move a little further away from her, and, taking up an ornament
from the mantelpiece, he examined it while he said: 'As for America, I
quite see that; that's what I was really thinking of in what I was
saying about London. You are London, and it wouldn't do to take you away
from it. I shouldn't think of taking you away. What I would ask you to
do would be to take me in. Since being over here, this time, and seeing
some of the real life of the country--what it's working towards, what it
needs and means--and, moreover, taking into consideration the character
of my own work, I should feel perfectly justified in making a compromise
between my patriotism and my--my affection for you. Some day you might
perhaps find that you'd like to pay us a visit, over there; I think
you'd find it interesting, and it wouldn't, of course, be my America
that you'd see, not the serious and unfashionable America; it would be a
very different America from that that you'd find waiting to welcome you.
So that what I should suggest--and feel justified in suggesting--would
be that I spent three months alternately in England and America; I
should in that way get half a year of home life and half a year of my
own country, and be able, perhaps, to be something of a link between
the English and American scientific worlds. As for our life
here'--Franklin remembered old Miss Buchanan's words--'you should have
your own establishments and,' he lifted his eyes to hers, now, and
smiled a little, 'pursue the just and the beautiful under the most
favourable conditions.'

Helen, when he smiled so at her, turned from him and sank again into her
chair. She leaned her elbow on the arm and put her hand over her eyes. A
languor of great weariness went over her, the languor of the burnt-out
thing floating in the air like a drift of ashes.

Here, at la