ld come to
smile over it as one smiles at distant childish griefs? Surely not. Yet
the presage of it passed bleakly over her soul. Life was so reasonable.
And there it sat in the person of Franklin Winslow Kane; life, wise,
kind, commonplace, and inexorably given to the fact, to the present, to
the future that the present built, inexorably oblivious of the past. Her
tragic, rebel heart cried out against it, but her mind whispered with a
hateful calm that life conquered tragedy.

Let it be so, then. She faced it. In the very fact of submission to life
her tragedy would live on; the tragedy--and this she would never
forget--would be to feel it no longer. She would be life's captive, not
its soldier, and she would keep to the end the captive's bitter heart.
She knew, as she put down her hand at last and looked at Franklin Kane,
that it was to be acquiescence, unless he could not accept her terms.
She was ready, ironically, wearily ready for life; but it must be on her
own terms. There must be no loophole for misunderstanding between her
and her friend--if she were to marry him. Only by the clearest
recognition of what she owed him could her pride be kept intact; and she
owed him cold, cruel candour. 'Do you understand, I wonder,' she said to
him, and in a voice that he had never heard from her before, the voice,
he knew, of the real self, 'how different I am from what you think a
human being should be? Do you realise that, if I marry you, it will be
because you have money--because you have a great deal of money--and only
for that? I like you, I respect you; I would be a loyal wife to you, but
if you weren't rich--and very rich--I should not think of marrying you.'

Franklin received this information with an unmoved visage, and after a
pause in which they contemplated each other deeply, he replied: 'All
right.'

'That isn't all,' said Helen. 'You are very good--an idealist. You think
me--even in this frankness of mine--far nicer than I am. I have no
ideals--none at all. I want to be independent and to have power to do
what I please. As for justice and beauty--it's too kind of you to
remember so accurately some careless words of mine.'

Franklin remained unperturbed, unless the quality of intent and
thoughtful pity in his face were perturbation. 'You don't know how nice
you are,' he remarked, 'and that's the nicest thing about you. You are
the honestest woman I've met, and you seem to me about the most unhappy.
I guessed