hurt. 'I can't tell you how---- I mean I'm so completely
sorry. You see, I was so taken aback--so cut up, you know. I could think
of nothing else. She is such an old friend--my nearest friend. I never
imagined her marrying, somehow; it was like hearing that she was going
away for ever. And what you said made me angry.' Even he, with all his
compunction, could but come back to the truth.

And, helpless, she could but lean on his pity, his sheer human pity.

'I know. He was my nearest friend too. For all my life I've been first
with him. I was cut up too. I am sorry--I spoke so.'

'Poor girl--poor dear. Here, take my arm. Here. Now, you do feel
better.'

She was on her feet, her hand drawn through his arm, her face turned
from him and still bathed in tears.

They walked back slowly along the road. They were silent. From time to
time she knew that he looked at her with solicitude; but she could not
return his look. The memory of her own words was with her, a strange,
new, menacing fact in life. She had said them, and they had altered
everything. Henceforth she depended on his pity, on his loyalty, on his
sense of duty to a task undertaken. Their bond was recognised as an
unequal one. Once or twice, in the dull chaos of her mind, a flicker of
pride rose up. Could she not emulate Helen? Helen was to marry a man who
did not love her. Helen was to marry rationally, with open eyes, a man
who was her friend. But Helen did not love the man who did not love her.
She was not his thrall. She gained, she did not lose, her freedom.

CHAPTER XXV.

A week was gone since Helen had given her consent to Franklin, and again
she was in her little sitting-room and again waiting, though not for
Franklin. Franklin had been with her all the morning; and he had been
constantly with her through the week, and she had found the closer
companionship, until to-day, strangely easy. Franklin's very lacks
endeared him to her. It was wonderful to see any one so devoid of any
glamour, of any adventitious aid from nature, who yet so beamed. This
beaming quality was, for Helen, his chief characteristic. There was
certainly no brilliancy in Franklin's light; it was hardly a ray and it
emitted never a sparkle; but it was a mild, diffused effulgence, and she
always felt more peaceful and restored for coming within its radius.

It had wrapped her around all the week, and it had remained so unchanged
that their relation, too, had seemed unchanged