Gerald was silent for a long time, and she knew that he was gazing at her as a dog gazes when some inexorable and inexplicable refusal turns its world to emptiness. And with her pain for his pain came the rising of old anger and old irony against him; for whose fault was it that even the bitter joy of perfect freedom was cut off? Who had been so blind as not to see that a wife must, in common loyalty, bring circumspection and a careful drawing of limits? Who was it who, in his folly, had not known that his impulsive acquiescence, his idle acceptance of the established comfort and order held out to him, had cut away half of their friendship? Absurd for Gerald, now, to feel reproach and injury. For when he spoke again it was, though in careful tones, with uncontrollable reproach. 'You know, Helen, I never expected this. I don't know that I'd have been able to face this----' He checked himself; already he had learned something of what was required of him. 'It's like poisoning part of my life for me.' Helen did not allow the bitter smile to curl her lips; her inner rejoinder answered him with: 'Whose fault is it that all my life is poisoned?' 'After all,' said Gerald, and now with a tremor in his voice, 'an old friend--a friend like you--a more than sister--is nearer than any new claims.' She had never heard Gerald's voice break before--for anything to do with her, at least--and she felt that her cheek whitened in hearing it; but she was able to answer in the same even tones: 'I don't think so. No one can be near enough to talk about your wife with you.' He then turned his back and looked for a long time into the fire. She guessed that there were tears in his eyes, and that he was fighting with anger, pain, and amazement, and the knowledge filled her with cruel joy and with a torturing pity. She longed to tell him that she hated him, and she longed to put her arms around him and to comfort him--comfort him because he was going to marry some one else, and must be loyal to the woman preferred as wife. It was she, however, who first recovered herself. She got up and pinched a withered flower from the fine azalea that Franklin Kane had sent her the day before, and, dropping it into the waste-paper basket, she said at last, very resolutely, 'Come, Gerald, don't be silly.' He showed her now the face of a miserable, sulky boy, and Helen, smiling at him, went on: 'We have a great many other subjects of conversation, you will recollect. We can still talk about all the things we used to talk about. Sit down, and don't look like that, or I shall be angry with you.' She knew her power over him; it was able to deceive him as to their real situation, and this was to have obeyed pity, not anger. Half unwillingly he smiled a little, and, rubbing his hand through his hair and sinking into a chair, he said: 'Laugh at me if you feel like it; I'm ill-used.'