A heavy silence followed his words. In the silence the impression that came to Gerald was as if one threw reconnoitring pebbles into a well, expecting a swift response of shallowness, and heard instead, after a wondering pause, the hollow reverberations of sombre, undreamed-of depths. Franklin's eyes were on him and Helen's eyes were on him, and he knew that in both their eyes he had proved himself once more, to say the least of it, absurd. 'Mr. Digby,' said Franklin Kane, and his voice was so strange that it sounded indeed like the fall of the stone in far-off darkness, 'perhaps you are saying what we all see; but perhaps we don't all see the same things in the same way; perhaps,' Franklin went on, finding his way, 'you don't even see some things at all.' Gerald had flushed. 'I know I'm behaving caddishly. I've no right to say anything until I see Althea.' 'Well, perhaps not,' Franklin conceded. 'But, you know,' said Gerald, groping too, 'it's not as if it were really sudden--the Althea side of it, I mean. We've not hit it off at all. I've disappointed her frightfully; it will be a relief to her, I know--to hear'--Gerald stammered a little--'that I see now, as clearly as she does, that we couldn't be happy together. Of course,' and he grew still more red, 'it will be she who throws me over. And--I think I'd better go to her at once.' 'Wait, Gerald,' said Helen. He paused in his precipitate dash to the door. Only her gaze, till now, had told of the chaos within her; but when Gerald said that he was going to Althea, she found words. 'Wait a moment. I don't think that you understand. I don't think, as Franklin says, that you see some things at all. Do you realise what you are doing?' Gerald stood, his hand on the door knob, and looked at her. 'Yes; I realise it perfectly.' 'Do you realise that it will not change me and that I think you are behaving outrageously?' 'Even if it won't change you I'd have to do it now. I can't marry another woman when I'm in love with you.' 'Can't you? When you know that you can never marry me?' 'Even if I know that,' said Gerald, staring at her and, with his deepening sense of complications, looking, for him, almost stern. 'Well, know it; once for all.' 'That you won't ever forgive me?' Gerald questioned. 'Put it like that if you like to,' she answered. Gerald turned again to go, and it was now Franklin who checked him. 'Mr. Digby--wait,' he said; 'Helen--wait.' He had been looking at them both while they interchanged their hostilities, and yet, though watching them, he had been absent, as though he were watching something else even more. 'What I mean, what I want to say, is this----' he rather stammered. 'Don't please go to Althea directly. I'm to go to her this evening. She asked me to come and see her at six.' He pulled out his watch. 'It's five now. Will you wait? Will you wait till this evening, please?'