He took her hands and held them while he looked into her eyes. The face she lifted to him was a woeful one, in spite of the steadying of its pale lips to a smile. It was not enfranchisement and the sustained height that he saw--it was fear and desolation; they looked at him out of her large, sad eyes and they were like an uttered cry. He saw her need, worse still, he saw her trust; and yet, ah yet, his hope, his unacknowledged hope, the hope which Helen's magic had poured into his veins, pulsed in him. He saw her need, but as he looked, full of compassion and solicitude, he was hoping that her need was not of him. Suddenly Althea burst into sobs. She leaned her face against his shoulder, her hands still held in his, and she wept out: 'O Franklin, I had to send for you--you are my only friend--I am so unhappy, so unhappy.' Franklin put an arm around her, still holding her hand, and he slightly patted her back as she leaned upon him. 'Poor Althea, poor dear,' he said. 'Oh, what shall I do, Franklin?' she whispered. 'Tell me all about it,' said Franklin. 'Tell me what's the matter.' She paused for a moment, and in the pause her thoughts, released for that one instant from their place of servitude, scurried through the inner confusion. His tone, the quietness, kindness, rationality of it, seemed to demand reason, not impulse, from her, the order of truth and not the chaos of feeling. But pain and fear had worked for too long upon her, and she did not know what truth was. All she knew was that he was near, and tender and compassionate, and to know that seemed to be knowing at last that here was the real love, the love of spirit from which she had turned to lower things. Impulse, not insincere, surged up, and moved by it alone she sobbed on, 'O Franklin, I have made a mistake, a horrible, horrible mistake. It's killing me. I can't go on. I don't love him, Franklin--I don't love Gerald--I can't marry him. And how can I tell him? How can I break faith with him?' Franklin stood very still, his hand clasping hers, the other ceasing its rhythmic, consolatory movement. He held her, this woman whom he had loved for so many years, and over her bent head he looked before him at the frivolous and ugly wall-paper, a chaos of festooned chrysanthemums on a bright pink ground. He gazed at the chrysanthemums, and he wondered, with a direful pang, whether Althea were consciously lying to him. She sobbed on: 'Even in the first week, I knew that something was wrong. Of course I was in love--but it was only that--there was nothing else except being in love. Doubts gnawed at me from the first; I couldn't bear to accept them; I hoped on and on. Only in this last week I've seen that I can't--I can't marry him. Oh----' and the wail was again repeated, 'what shall I do, Franklin?'