w, that
she hasn't broken off long ago. You are in love with Althea, and I am in
love with Helen; so there it is. I'm only saying what we are all
seeing.' Gerald spoke gravely, yet at the same time with a certain
blitheness, as though he took it for granted, for Franklin as well as
for himself, that he thus made both their paths clear and left any
hazardous element in their situations the same for both. Would Althea
have Franklin and would Helen have him? This was really all that now
needed elucidation.

A heavy silence followed his words. In the silence the impression that
came to Gerald was as if one threw reconnoitring pebbles into a well,
expecting a swift response of shallowness, and heard instead, after a
wondering pause, the hollow reverberations of sombre, undreamed-of
depths. Franklin's eyes were on him and Helen's eyes were on him, and he
knew that in both their eyes he had proved himself once more, to say the
least of it, absurd.

'Mr. Digby,' said Franklin Kane, and his voice was so strange that it
sounded indeed like the fall of the stone in far-off darkness, 'perhaps
you are saying what we all see; but perhaps we don't all see the same
things in the same way; perhaps,' Franklin went on, finding his way,
'you don't even see some things at all.'

Gerald had flushed. 'I know I'm behaving caddishly. I've no right to say
anything until I see Althea.'

'Well, perhaps not,' Franklin conceded.

'But, you know,' said Gerald, groping too, 'it's not as if it were
really sudden--the Althea side of it, I mean. We've not hit it off at
all. I've disappointed her frightfully; it will be a relief to her, I
know--to hear'--Gerald stammered a little--'that I see now, as clearly
as she does, that we couldn't be happy together. Of course,' and he grew
still more red, 'it will be she who throws me over. And--I think I'd
better go to her at once.'

'Wait, Gerald,' said Helen.

He paused in his precipitate dash to the door. Only her gaze, till now,
had told of the chaos within her; but when Gerald said that he was going
to Althea, she found words. 'Wait a moment. I don't think that you
understand. I don't think, as Franklin says, that you see some things at
all. Do you realise what you are doing?'

Gerald stood, his hand on the door knob, and looked at her. 'Yes; I
realise it perfectly.'

'Do you realise that it will not change me and that I think you are
behaving outrageously?'

'Even if it won't change you I'd hav