mory of herself standing here and
saying to him 'I'm a broken-hearted woman.' And she knew that Franklin
was seeing in her face the same memories, and that, with his intuitive
insight where things of the heart were concerned, he was linking them
with the silent figure at the window.

'I suppose,' he said, going to the fire and standing before it, his
back to the others, 'I suppose I can't help to elucidate things a
little.'

'No, I think they are quite clear,' said Helen, 'or, at all events, you
put an end to them by staying; especially'--and she fixed her gaze on
the figure at the window--'as Gerald is going now.'

But Gerald did not move and Franklin presently remarked, 'Sometimes, you
know, a third person can see things in another way and help things out.
If you could just, for instance, talk the matter over quietly, before
me, as a sort of adviser, you know. That might help. It's a pity for old
friends to quarrel.'

Gerald turned from the window at this. He had come down from the heights
and knew that he had risen there too lightly, and that the tangles of
lower realities must be unravelled before he could be free to mount
again--Helen with him. He knew, at last, that he had made Helen very
angry and that it might take some time to disentangle things; but the
radiance of the heights was with him still, and if, to Helen's eye, he
looked fatuous, to Franklin, seeing his face now, for the first time, he
looked radiant.

'Helen,' he said, smiling gravely at her, 'what Kane says is very
sensible. He is the one person in the world one could have such things
out before. Let's have them out; let's put the case to him and he shall
be umpire.'

Helen bent her ironic and implacable gaze upon him and remained silent.

'You think I've no right to put it before him, I suppose.'

'You most certainly have no right. And you would gain nothing by it.
What I told you just now was true.'

'I can't accept that.'

'Then you are absurd.'

'Very well, I am absurd, then. But there's one thing I have a right to
tell Kane,' Gerald went on, unsmiling now. 'I owe it to him to tell him.
He'll think badly of me, I know; but that can't be helped. We've all got
into a dreadful muddle and the only way out of it is to be frank. So I
must tell you, Kane, that Althea and I have found out that we have made
a mistake; we can't hit it off. I'm not the man to make her happy and
she feels it, I'm sure she feels it. It's only for my sake, I kno