Miss Grizel shook her hand impatiently above her knee. 'Love! Love! What do you all mean with your love, I'd like to know? What's this sudden love of yours for Helen, you who, until yesterday, were willing to marry another woman for her money--or were you in love with her too? What's Miss Jakes's love of Mr. Kane, who, until a week ago, thought herself in love with you? And you may well ask me what is Mr. Kane's love of Helen, who, until a week ago, thought himself in love with Miss Jakes? But there I answer you that he is the only one of you who seems to me to know what love is. One can respect his feeling; it means more than himself and his own emotions. It means something solid and dependable. Helen recognised it, and Helen's feeling for him--though it certainly wasn't love in your foolish sense--was something that she valued more than anything you can have to offer her. And I repeat, though I'm sorry to pain you, that it is clear to me that you have wrecked her life as well as Mr. Kane's.' Miss Grizel had had her say. She stood up, her lips compressed, her eyes weighty with their hard, good sense. And Gerald rose, too. He was at a disadvantage, and an unfair one, but he did not think of that. He thought, with stupefaction, of what he had done in this room the day before to Franklin and to Helen. In the depths of his heart he couldn't wish it undone, for he couldn't conceive of himself now as married to Althea, nor could he, in spite of Miss Grizel's demonstrations, conceive of Helen as married to Franklin Kane. But with all the depths of his heart he wished what he had done, done differently. And although he couldn't conceive of Helen as married to Franklin Kane, although he couldn't accept Miss Grizel's account of her state as final, nor believe her really wrecked--since, after all, she loved him, not Franklin--he could clearly conceive from Miss Grizel's words that by doing it as he had, he had wrecked many things and endangered many. What these things were her words only showed him confusedly, and his clearest impulse now was to see just what they were, to see just what he had done. Miss Grizel couldn't show him, for Miss Grizel didn't know the facts; Helen would not show him, she refused to see him; his mind leaped at once, as he rose and stood looking rather dazedly about before going, to Franklin Kane. Kane, as he had said yesterday, was the one person in the world before whom one could have such things out. Even though he had wrecked Kane, Kane was still the only person he could turn to. And since he had wrecked him in his ignorance he felt that now, in his enlightenment, he owed him something infinitely delicate and infinitely deep in the way of apology. 'Well, thank you,' he said, grasping Miss Grizel's hand. 'You had to say it, and it had to be said. Good-bye.'