ough. I could make it worth your while.'

He looked, and he could say nothing. Against his need of Helen he must
measure Althea's need of him. He must measure, too--ah, cruel
perplexity--the chance for Helen's happiness. She was unhesitating; but
how could she know herself so inflexible, how could she know that the
hard heart might not melt? For the sake of Helen's happiness he must
measure not only Gerald's need of her against his own and Gerald's power
against his own mere pitifulness, but he must wonder, in an agony of
sudden surmise, which, in the long-run, could give her most, the loved
or the unloved man. In all his life no moment had ever equalled this in
its fulness, and its intensity, and its pain. It thundered, it rushed,
it darkened--like the moment of death by drowning and like the great
river that bears away the drowning man. Memories flashed in it, broken
and vivid--of Althea's eyes and Helen's smile; Althea so appealing,
Helen so strong; and, incongruous in its remoteness, a memory of the
bleak, shabby little street in a Boston suburb, the small wooden house
painted brown, where he was born, where scanty nasturtiums flowered on
the fence in summer, and in winter, by the light of a lamp with a ground
glass shade, his mother's face, careful, worn, and gentle, bent over the
family mending. Where, indeed, had the river borne him, and what had
been done to him?

Helen's voice came to him, and Helen's face reshaped itself--a strange
and lovely beacon over the engulfing waters. She saw his torment and she
understood. 'Go to her if you must,' she said; 'and I know that you
must. But don't go with mistaken ideas. Remember what I tell you.
Nothing is changed--for me, or in me. If Althea doesn't want you
back--or if Althea does want you back--I shall be waiting.' And, seeing
his extremity, Helen, grave and clear, filled her cup of magic to the
brim. As she had said that morning, she said now--but with what a
difference: 'Kiss me good-bye, Franklin.'

He could not move towards her; he could not kiss her; but, smiling more
tenderly than he could have thought Helen would ever smile, she put her
arms around him and drew his rapt, transfigured face to hers. And
holding him tenderly, she kissed him and said: 'Whatever happens--you've
had the best of me.'

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Althea, since the misty walk with Gerald, had been plunged in a pit of
mental confusion. She swung from accepted abasement to the desperate