“God knows,” he wrote her. “And He purposes, I am fain to believe, if He purposes anything we do or suffer. The hour may come, and the way _might_ clear. More incredible things have happened to men and women loving less than we. If I can, I claim you when I can. Oh, wait for me, and trust me! Life is so short; it is not easy. Sometimes madness enters into me, to fling all these cold, these cruel considerations, these things we call honor, unselfishness, chivalry, to the gales.... Then I come to myself. I will not wrong you. Help me to bear to live without you till I see your face again.” Helen wrote him noble letters; brave, womanly, and as trustful as the swing of the earth in its orbit. It is not too much to say that few women in her place would have shown the strong composure of this ardent girl. The relation between acknowledged lovers unbetrothed is one whose difficulty only an inspired delicacy can control. Helen’s clear eyes held no shadows. The dark wing of regret for a moment’s weakness never brushed between her heart and this Sir Galahad who loved her like man and spirit too. Few women reared as she had been would have trusted the man as she did; we may add that fewer men would have deserved it. Emanuel Bayard did. Her heart knew him for one of the sons of light, who will not, because he cannot, cause the woman whom he loves an hour’s regret that she has believed in him utterly and told him so. Now, the value of a woman’s intuition in most of the problems or relations of life cannot be overestimated; when she loves, it is the least reliable of her attributes or qualities. Helen in her composed way recognized this fact perfectly, but it gave her no uneasiness. “My own perception might fail me,” she wrote. “You could not. It is not my own sense of what is best to do that I am trusting, in this: it is you.” When he read these words, he put the paper to his lips, and laid his face upon it, and covered it from the sight even of his own eyes. The date of Professor Carruth’s return was set for early October. In September Bayard received from Helen the news that her mother had met with an accident--a fall; an arm was broken, and, at the age of the patient, the surgeon forbade the voyage. The Professor would get back to his lecture-room, as he must. The two ladies were indefinitely delayed in Berlin. * * * * *