And now, pierced by his pity, Franklin could rise to all she needed of him. The old faith sustained him, too. One didn't love some one for all one's life like that, to be left quite dispossessed. Many things were changed, but many still held firm; and though, deep in his heart, sick with its relinquishment, Helen's words seemed to whisper, 'Some things can't be joys when they come too late,' he could answer himself as he had answered her, putting away the irony and scepticism of disenchantment--'It's wonderful the way joy can grow,' and draw strength for himself and for his poor Althea from that act of affirmation. 'Why, of course I love you, Althea, dear,' he said. 'How can you ask me that? I've always loved you, haven't I? You knew I did, didn't you, or else you wouldn't have sent? You knew I wasn't bound if you were free. I understand it all.' And smiling at her so that she should forget for ever that she had had a new fear, he added, 'And see here, dear, you mustn't delay a moment in letting Gerald know. Come, write him a note now, and I'll have it sent to his club so that he shall hear right away.' CHAPTER XXIX. Helen woke next morning after unbroken, heavy slumbers, with a mind as vague and empty as a young child's. All night long she had been dreaming strange, dreary dreams of her youth. There had been no pain in them, or fear, only a sad lassitude, as of one who, beaten and weary, looks back from a far distance at pain and fear outlived. And lying in her bed, inert and placid, she felt as if she had been in a great battle, and that after the annihilation of anaesthetics she had waked to find herself with limbs gone and wounds bandaged, passive and acquiescent, in a world from which all large issues had been eliminated for ever. It was the emptiest kind of life on which her eyes opened so quietly this morning. She was not even to be life's captive. The little note which had come to her last night from Franklin and now lay beside her bed had told her that. He had told her that Althea had taken him back, and he had only added, 'Thank you, dear Helen, for all that you have given me and all that you were willing to give.' In the overpowering sense of sadness that had been the last of the day's great emotions Helen had found no mitigation of relief for her own escape. That she had escaped made only an added bitterness. And even sadness seemed to be a memory this morning, and the relief that came, profound and almost sweet, was in the sense of having passed away from feeling. She had felt too much; though, had life been in her with which to think or feel, she could have wept over Franklin.