ely duties, the
spinster friend in hers, administering balms and counsels; the wife at
Merriston House, and the spinster friend in the little sitting-room
where, for so many years, he had come to her with all his moods and
misfortunes. She felt that her eyes fixed themselves on him with a cold
menace as he stood there on the other side of the fire and, putting his
foot on the fender, looked first at her and then down at the flames. His
very silence was full of the sense of injury; but she knew that hers was
the compelling silence and that she could force him to be the first to
speak. And so it was that presently he said:

'Well, Helen, this is great news.'

'Yes, isn't it?' she answered. 'It has been a year of news, hasn't it?'

He stared, courteously blank, and something in her was pleased to
observe that he looked silly with his affectation of blandness.

'I beg your pardon?'

'You had your great event, and I, now, have mine.'

'Ah yes, I see.'

'It's all rather queer when one comes to think of it,' said Helen.
'Althea, my new friend--whom I told you of here, only a few months
ago--and her friend. How important they have become to us, and how
little, last summer, we could have dreamed of it.' She, too, was
speaking artificially, and was aware of it; but she was well aware that
Gerald didn't find that she looked silly. She had every advantage over
the friend who came with his pretended calm and his badly hidden
rancour. And since he stood silent, looking at the fire, she added,
mildly and cheerfully: 'I am so glad for your happiness, Gerald, and I
hope that you are glad for mine.'

He looked up at her now, and she could not read the look; it hid
something--or else it sought for something hidden; and in its
oddity--which reminded her of a blind animal dazedly seeking its
path--it so nearly touched her that, with a revulsion from any hint of
weakening pity for him, it made her bitterness against him greater than
before.

'I'm afraid I can't say I'm glad, Helen,' he replied. 'I'm too amazed,
still, to feel anything except'--he seemed to grope for a word and then
to give it up--'amazement.'

'I was surprised myself,' said Helen. 'I had not much hope left of
anything so fortunate happening to me.'

'You feel it, then, so fortunate?'

'Don't you think that it is--to marry millions,' Helen asked, smiling,
'and to have found such a good man to care for me?'

'I think it is he who is fortunate,' said Gerald, af