"You have been a brick about Helena," she said. "I want to tell you that. Your forgiveness of the way she treated you seems to me beyond all praise." "Oh, nonsense," said he lightly. "Besides, it was so dreadfully uncomfortable being always angry and miserable. Martin showed me that. But about Helena: how is she bearing it?" It was now Jessie's turn to be obliged to cloak her meaning. "Very calmly and bravely," she said. "She would," said Archie enthusiastically. "One always felt there was a steel will behind all Helena's gentleness. What will she do, do you think? Would she perhaps like to come down here? There isn't much to offer her, but then London in August doesn't offer much either." Suddenly all Jessie's mistrust stirred and erected itself. She could not believe that this scheme, which would throw Helena and Archie completely together, could be made with the apparent innocence with which it was put forward. How was it possible that Archie, who so few weeks ago was in such depths of misery and bitterness, could honourably suggest so dangerous a plan? It could not be Archie who suggested it: it came from that smiling white presence which she had seen in his room not many nights ago. And it was just that which she could not say to him. "It's nice of you to think of that," she said. "Not a bit: it would be nice for me, not nice of me. And besides," he added, with an amazing cynicism, "it would be my way of 'doing my bit,' which everybody is talking about, if I could make things cheerfuller for pretty women like poor Helena, whose husband has gone out to fight." The moment he had said it he was sorry. But for the moment he had forgotten he was speaking to Jessie: the sentence had come out of his mouth as if he was but talking to himself. Also it introduced the suggestion of his own forbearance to enlist. There was a rather awkward silence, and he felt irritated with Jessie for not changing the subject which he had so incautiously brought forward. But that was like her. She had no tact in such matters, refusing to be insincere, when insincerity was so simple a matter. His irritation grew on him, and at the same time he wanted to know what Jessie thought of his remaining inertly here, while all his contemporaries were enlisting. Why he wanted to know he did not define: the motive perhaps belonged to the time when Jessie had been so good a friend, and perhaps he knew that she was so still. "Or do you think that I ought to behave like William, and serve my country?" he asked. Jessie sat with eyes downcast for a moment. Then she raised them and looked him in the face, with all her affection and sincerity alight in them. "Do you really want to know what I think, Archie?" she asked. "Certainly I do." "Well, I can't understand your not doing it," she said. "At the same time, I think it is a matter about which you must decide for yourself." The sincerity of his manner equalled hers. He never spoke with more apparent frankness.