For a long moment—and in it they both recognised that the crash had come, and that they were struggling in dark, cold water—Helen was silent. She kept her eyes on Althea and she did not move. Then, while she still looked steadily upon her, a slow colour rose in her cheeks. It was helplessly, burningly, that she blushed, and Althea saw that she blushed as much for anger as for shame, and that the shame was for her.

She did not need Helen's blush to show her what she had done, what desecration she had wrought. Her own blood beat upwards in hot surges and tears rushed into her eyes. She covered her face with her hands and dropped again into her chair, sobbing.

Helen did not help her out. She got up and went to the mantelpiece and looked down at the fire for some moments. And at last she spoke, 'I didn't mean that either. I think that Franklin is too good for either of us.'

'Good!' wept Althea. 'He is an angel. Do you suppose I don't see that? But why should I pretend when you don't. I'm not in love with Franklin. I'm unworthy of him—more unworthy of him than you were—but I'm not in love with him, even though he is an angel. So don't tell me that I am lucky. I am a most miserable woman.' And she wept on, indifferent now to any revelations.

Presently she heard Helen's voice. It was harder than she had ever known it. 'May I say something? It's for his sake—more than for yours. What I advise you to do is not to bother so much about love. You couldn't stick to Gerald because you weren't loved enough; and you're doubting your feeling for Franklin, now, because you can't love him enough. Give it all up. Follow my second-rate example. Be glad that you're marrying an angel and that he has all that money. And do remember that though you're not getting what you want, you are getting a good deal and he is getting nothing, so try to play the game and to see if you can't make it up to him; see if you can't make him happy.'

Althea's sobbing had now ceased, though she kept her face still covered. Bitter sadness, too deep now for resentment, was in her silence, a silence in which she accepted what Helen's words had of truth. The sadness was to see at last to the full, that she had no place in Helen's life. There was no love, there was hardly liking, behind Helen's words. And so it had been from the very first, ever since she had loved and Helen accepted; ever since she had gone forth carrying gifts, and Helen had stood still and been vaguely aware that homage was being offered. It had, from the very beginning, been this; Helen, hard, self-centred, insensible, so that anything appealing or uncertain was bound to be shattered against her. And was not this indifference to offered love a wrong done to it, something that all life cried out against? Had not weakness and fear and the clinging appeal of immaturity their rights, so that the strong heart that was closed to them, that did not go out to them in tenderness and succour, was the dull, the lesser heart? Dimly she knew, not exculpating herself, not judging her beautiful Helen, that though she had, in her efforts towards happiness, pitifully failed, there was failure too in being blind, in being unconscious of any effort to be made. The more trivial, the meaner aspect of her grief was merged in a fundamental sincerity.

'What you say is true,' she said, 'for I know that I am a poor creature. I know that I give Franklin nothing, and take everything from him. But it is easy for you to talk of what is wise and strong, Helen, and to tell me what I ought to do and feel. You have everything. You have the man who loves you and the man you love. It is easy for you to be clear and hard and see other people's faults. I know—I know about you and Gerald.'

Helen turned to her. Althea had dropped her hands. She did not look at her friend, but, with tear-disfigured eyes, out of the window; and there was a desolate dignity in her aspect. For the first time in their unequal intercourse they were on an equal footing. Helen was aware of Althea, and, in a vague flash, for self-contemplation was difficult to her, she was aware of some of the things that Althea saw: the lack of tenderness; the lack of imagination; the indifference to all that did not come within the circle of her own tastes and affections. It was just as Franklin had said, and Gerald, and now Althea; her heart was hard. And she was sorry, though she did not know what she was to do; for though she was sorry for Althea her heart did not soften for her as it had softened for Franklin, and for the thought of Franklin—too good for them all, sacrificed to them all. It was the thought of the cruelty of nature, making of Franklin, with all his wealth of love, a creature never to be desired, that gave to her vision of life, and of all this strange predicament in which life had involved them, an ironic colour incompatible with the warmth of trust and tenderness which Franklin had felt lacking in her. She was ironic, she was hard, and she must make the best of it. But it was in a gentle voice that, looking at her friend's melancholy head, she asked: 'Who told you that?'

'Mrs. Mallison,' said Althea. 'I've been a hypocrite to you all the morning.'

'And I have been an odious prig to you. That ass of a Kitty Mallison. I had not intended any one to know for months.' Even in her discomfiture Helen retained her tact. She did not say 'we.'

'For my sake, I suppose?'

'Oh no! why for yours?' Helen was determined that Althea should be hurt no further. If pity for Franklin had edged her voice, pity for Althea must keep from her the blighting knowledge of Franklin's sacrifice.

'It was we who were left, wasn't it—Gerald and I? I don't want us to appear before people's eyes at once as consolation prizes to each other.'

Althea now turned a sombre gaze upon her. 'He couldn't be that to you, since you've never loved 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 to sleep. But when she entered her little sitting-room she found Franklin there waiting for her. He had been reading the newspapers before the fire and had risen quickly on hearing her step. It was as if she had forgotten Franklin all this time.

She stood by the door that she had closed, and gazed at him. It was without will, or hope, or feeling that she gazed, as if he were a part only of that alien world she had looked at, and this outward seeing was relentless. A meagre, commonplace, almost comic little man. She saw behind him his trite and colourless antecedents; she saw before him—and her—the future, trite and colourless too, but for the extraneous glitter of the millions that surrounded him as incongruously as a halo would have done. He was an angel, of course; he was good; but he was only that; there were no varieties, no graces, no mysteries. His very interests were as meagre as his personality; he had hardly a taste, except the taste for doing his best. Books, music, pictures—all the great world of beauty and intellect that the world of goodness and workaday virtues existed, perhaps, only to make possible—its finer, more ethereal superstructure—only counted for Franklin as recreations, relaxations, things half humorously accepted as one accepts a glass of lemonade on a hot day. Not only was he without charm, but he was unaware of charm; he didn't see it or feel it or need it. And she, who had seen and felt, she who had known Gerald and Helen, must be satisfied with this. It was this that she must strive to be worthy of. She was unworthy, and she knew it; but that acceptation was only part of the horror of defeat. And the soulless gaze with which she looked at him oddly chiselled her pallid face. She was like a dumb, classic mask, too impersonal for tragedy. Her lips were parted in their speechlessness and her eyes vacant of thought.

Then, after that soulless seeing, she realised that she had frightened Franklin. He came to her. 'Dear—what is the matter?' he asked.

He came so near that she looked into his eyes. She looked deeply, for a long time, in silence. And while she looked, while Franklin's hands gently found and held hers, life came to her with dreadful pain again. She felt, rather than knew—and with a long shudder—that the world was vast; she felt and feared it as vast and alien. She felt that she was alone, and the loneliness was a terror, beating upon her. And she felt—no longer seeing anything but the deeps of Franklin's eyes—that he was her only refuge; and closing her own eyes she stumbled towards him and he received her in his arms.

They sat on the sofa, and Franklin clasped her while she wept, and she seemed to re-enter childhood where all that she wanted was to cry her heart out and have gentle arms around her while she confessed every wrong-doing that had made a barrier between herself and her mother's heart. 'O Franklin,' she sobbed, 'I'm so unhappy!'

He said nothing, soothing her as a mother might have done.

'Franklin, I loved him!' she sobbed. 'It was real: it was the reallest thing that ever happened to me. I only sent for you because I knew that he didn't love me. I loved him too much to go on if he didn't love me. What I have suffered, Franklin. And now he is going to marry Helen. He loves Helen. And I am not worthy of you.'

'Poor child,' said Franklin. He pressed his lips to her hair.

'You know, Franklin?'

'Yes, I know, dear.'

'I am not worthy of you,' Althea repeated. 'I have been weak and selfish. I've used you—to hide from myself—because I was too frightened to stand alone and give up things.'

'Well, you shan't stand alone any more,' said Franklin.

'But, Franklin—dear—kind Franklin—why should you marry me? I don't love you—not as I loved him. I only wanted you because I was afraid. I must tell you all the truth. I only want you now, and cling to you like this, because I am afraid, because I can't go on alone and have nothing to live for.'

'You'll have me now, dear,' said Franklin. 'You'll try that, won't you, and perhaps you'll find it more worth while than you think.'

Something more now than fear and loneliness and penitence was piercing her. His voice: poor Franklin's voice. What had she done to him? What had they all done to him among them? And dimly, like the memory of a dream, yet sharply, too, as such memory may be sharp, there drifted for Althea the formless fear that hovered—formless yet urgent—when Franklin had come to her in her desperate need. It hovered, and it seemed to shape itself, as if through delicate curves of smoke, into Helen's face—Helen's eyes and smile. Helen, charm embodied; Helen, all the things that Franklin could never be; all the things she had believed till now, Franklin could never feel or need. What did she know of Franklin? so the fear whispered softly. What had Helen done to Franklin? What had it meant to Franklin, that strange mingling with magic?

She could never ask. She could never know. It would hover and whisper always, the fear that had yet its beauty. It humbled her and it lifted Franklin. He was more than she had believed. She had believed him all hers, to take; but it was he who had given himself to her, and there was an inmost shrine—ah, was there not?—that was not his to give. And pity, deep pity, and sadness immeasurable for a loss not hers alone, was in her as she sobbed: 'Ah, it is only because you are sorry for me. I have killed all the rest. You are not in love with me any longer—poor—poor Franklin—and everything is spoiled.'

But Franklin could show her that he had seen the fear, and yet that life was not spoiled by shrines in each heart from which the other was shut out. It was difficult to know how to say it; difficult to tell her that some truth she saw and yet that there was more truth for them both—plenty of truth, as he would have said, for them both to live on. And though it took him a little while to find the words, he did find them at last, completely, for her and for himself, saying gently, while he held her, 'No, it isn't, dear. It's not spoiled. It's not the same—for either of us—is it?—but it isn't spoiled. We've taken nothing from each other; some things weren't ours, that's all. And even if you don't much want to marry me, you must please have me, now; because I want to marry you. I want to live for you so much that by degrees, I feel sure of it, you'll want to live for me, too. We must live for each other; we've got each other. Isn't that enough, Althea?'

'Is it—is it enough?' she sobbed.

'I guess it is,' said Franklin.

His voice was sane and sweet, even if it was sad. It seemed the voice of life. Althea closed her eyes and let it fold her round. Only with Franklin could she find consolation in her defeat, or strength to live without the happiness that had failed her. Only Franklin could console her for having to take Franklin. Was that really all that it came to? No, she felt it growing, as they sat in silence, her sobs quieting, her head on his shoulder; it came to more. But she saw nothing clearly after the hateful, soulless seeing. The only clear thing was that it was good to be with Franklin.



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