When he arrived he found her reading before the fire in the little room where she did not often receive him; it was usually in the drawing-room that they met. Helen wore a black tea-gown, transparent and flowing, the same gown, indeed, remodelled to more domestic uses, in which Althea had first seen her. She looked pale and very thin. Franklin, too, was aware of feeling pale; he thought that he had felt pale ever since his talk with Miss Buchanan on Saturday. He had not yet come to any decision about the motives that had made him acquiesce in her proposal; he only knew that, whatever they were, they were not those merely reasonable ones that she had put before him. A charming wife, a home and children; these were not enough, and Franklin knew it, to have brought him here to-day on his strange errand; nor was it an act of chivalry; nor was it pity and sympathy for his friend. All these, no doubt, made some small part of it; but they far from covered the case; they would have left him as calm and as rational as, he knew, he looked; but since he did not feel calm and rational he knew that the case was covered by very different motives. What they were he could not clearly see; but he felt that something was happening to him and that it was taking him far out of his normal course. Even his love for Althea had not taken him out of his course; it had never been incalculable; it had been the ground he walked on, the goal he worked towards; what was happening now was like a current, swift and unfathomable, that was bearing him he knew not where. Helen smiled at him and, turning in her chair to look up at him, gave him her hand. 'You look tired,' she said. 'You'll have some tea?' 'I've been looking up some things at the British Museum,' said Franklin, 'and I had a glass of milk and a bun; the bun was very satisfying, though I can't say that it was very satisfactory; I guess I shan't want anything else for some hours yet.' 'A bun? What made you have a bun?' said Helen, laughing. 'Well, it seemed to go with the place, somehow,' said Franklin. 'I can imagine that it might; I've only been there once; very large and very indigestible I found it, and most depressing. Yes, I see that it might make a bun seem suitable.' 'Ah, but it's a very wonderful place, you know,' Franklin said. 'I should have expected you to go oftener; you care about beauty.' 'Not beauty in a museum. I don't like museums. The mummies were what impressed me most, after the Elgin marbles, and everything there seemed like a mummy--dead and desecrated. Well, what have you been doing besides eating buns at the British Museum? Has London been working you very hard?' 'I've not seen much of London while you've been away,' said Franklin, who had drawn a chair to the other side of the fire. 'I think that you are London to me, and when you are out of it it doesn't seem to mean much--beyond museums and work.' 'Come, what of all your scientific friends?'