ved Franklin; and I know that you are not that to
him; Gerald didn't need to be consoled for losing me. He did need to be
consoled when he heard that you were marrying Franklin. I remember the
day that your letter came--the letter that said you were engaged. That
really ended things for us.' Her lip trembled. 'It is easy for you to
say that I didn't stick to Gerald because he didn't love me enough. How
could I have stuck to some one who, I see it well enough now, was
beginning to love some one else?'

Helen contemplated her and the truths she put before her. 'Try to
forgive me,' she said.

'There's nothing to forgive,' said Althea, rising. 'You told me the
truth, and what I had said was so despicable that I deserved to have it
told to me. All the mistakes are mine. I've wanted things that I've no
right to; I suppose it's that. You and I weren't made for each other,
just as Gerald and I weren't, and it's all only my mistake and my
misfortune--for wanting and loving people who couldn't want or love me.
I see it all at last, and it's all over. Good-bye, Helen.' She put out
her hand.

'Oh, but don't--don't----' Helen clasped her hand, strangely shaken by
impulses of pity and self-reproach that yet left her helpless before her
friend's sincerity. 'Don't say you are going to give me up,' she
finished, and tears stood in her eyes.

'I'm afraid I must give up all sorts of things,' said Althea, smiling
desolately. 'If we hadn't got so near, we might have gone on. I'm afraid
when people aren't made for each other they can't get so near without
its breaking them. Good-bye. I shall try to be worthy of Franklin. I
shall try to make him happy.'

CHAPTER XXXV.

She drove back to her hotel. She felt very tired. The world she gazed at
seemed vast and alien, a world in which she had no place. The truth had
come to her and she looked at it curiously, almost indifferently. London
flowed past her, long tides of purpose to right and left. The trees in
Green Park were softly blurred on the chill, white sky. She looked at
the trees and sky and at the far lift of Piccadilly, blackened with
traffic, and, at the faces that went by, as if it were all a vast
cinematograph and she the idlest of spectators. And it was here that
love had first come to her, and here that despair had come. Now both
were over and she accepted her defeat.

She thought, when the hotel was reached, and as she went upstairs, that
she would go to bed and try