:
Is it going to be for nothing--I mean for nothing where you are
concerned? If I'm to think of you going on alone with your heart
getting harder and drier every year, and everything tender and
trustful dying out of you--I don't see how I can bear it.

'So what I ask you is to try to be happy; what I ask you is to try
to make him happy; just look at it like that; try to make him happy
and to help him to grow to be a fine, big person, and then you'll
find out that you are growing, too, in all sorts of ways you never
dreamed of.

'When you get this, write to him and tell him that he may come. And
when he is with you, be kind to him. Oh--my dear Helen--I do beg it
of you. Put it like this--be kind to me and try.--Your affectionate

FRANKLIN.'

When Helen had read this letter she did not weep, but she felt as if
some hurt, almost deeper than she could endure, was being inflicted on
her. It had begun with the first sight of Franklin's letter; the writing
of it had looked like hard, steady breathing over some heart-arresting
pain. Franklin's suffering flowed into her from every gentle, careful
sentence; and to Helen, so unaware, till now, of any one's suffering but
her own, this sharing of Franklin's was an experience new and
overpowering. No tears came, while she held the letter and looked before
her intently, and it was not as if her heart softened; but it seemed to
widen, as if some greatness, irresistible and grave, forced a way into
it. It widened to Franklin, to the thought of Franklin and to Franklin's
suffering; its sorrow and its compassion were for Franklin; and as it
received and enshrined him, it shut Gerald out. There was no room for
Gerald in her heart.

She would do part of what Franklin asked of her, of course. She would
see Gerald; she would be kind to him; she would even try to feel for
him. But the effort was easy because she was so sure that it would be
fruitless. For Gerald, she was withered and burnt out. If she were to
'grow'--dear, funny phrases, even in her extremity, Helen could smile
over them; even though she loved dear Franklin and enshrined him, his
phrases would always seem funny to her--but if she were to grow it must
be for Franklin, and in a different way from what he asked. She would
indeed try not to become harder and drier; she would try to make of her
life something not too a