smiled a little, 'pursue the just and the beautiful under the most favourable conditions.' Helen, when he smiled so at her, turned from him and sank again into her chair. She leaned her elbow on the arm and put her hand over her eyes. A languor of great weariness went over her, the languor of the burnt-out thing floating in the air like a drift of ashes. Here, at last, in her hand, however strange the conditions, was the power she had determined to live for. She could, with Franklin's millions, mould circumstances to her will, and Franklin would be no more of an odd impediment than the husbands of many women who married for money--less of an impediment, indeed, than most, for--though it could only be for his money--she liked him, she was very fond of him, dear, good, and exquisite little man. Impossible little man she, no doubt, would once have thought him--impossible as husband, not as friend; but so many millions made all the difference in possibility. Franklin was now as possible as any prince, though, she wondered with the cold languor, could a prince have a nose like that? Franklin was possible, and it was in her hand, the power, the high security; yet she felt that it would be in weariness rather than in strength that the hand would close. It must close, must it not? If she refused Franklin what, after all, was left to her, what was left in herself or in her life that could say no to him? Nothing; nothing at all, no hope, no desire, no faith in herself or in life. If it came to that, the clearest embodiment of faith and life she knew sat opposite to her waiting for an answer. He was good; she was fond of him; he had millions; what could it be but yes? Yet, while her mind sank, like a feather floating downwards in still air, to final, inevitable acquiescence, while the little clock ticked with a fine, insect-like note, and the flames made a soft flutter like the noise of shaken silk, a blackness of chaotic suffering rose suddenly in her, and her thoughts were whirled far away. In flashes, dear and terrible, she saw it--her ruined youth. It rose in dim symbolic pictures, the moorland where melancholy birds cried and circled, where the rain fell and the wind called with a passionate cadence among the hills. To marry Franklin Kane--would it not be to abandon the past; would it not be to desecrate it and make it hers no longer? Was not the solitary moorland better, the anguish and despair better than the smug, warm, sane life of purpose and endeavour? If she was too tired, too indifferent, if she acquiesced, if she married Franklin Kane, would she forget that the reallest thing in her life had not been its sanity, and its purpose, but its wild, its secret, its broken-hearted love? Surely the hateful wisdom of the daily fact would not efface the memory so that, with years, she would come to smile over it as one smiles at distant childish griefs? Surely not. Yet the presage of it passed bleakly over her soul. Life was so reasonable.