'So what I ask you is to try to be happy; what I ask you is to try to make him happy; just look at it like that; try to make him happy and to help him to grow to be a fine, big person, and then you'll find out that you are growing, too, in all sorts of ways you never dreamed of. 'When you get this, write to him and tell him that he may come. And when he is with you, be kind to him. Oh--my dear Helen--I do beg it of you. Put it like this--be kind to me and try.--Your affectionate FRANKLIN.' When Helen had read this letter she did not weep, but she felt as if some hurt, almost deeper than she could endure, was being inflicted on her. It had begun with the first sight of Franklin's letter; the writing of it had looked like hard, steady breathing over some heart-arresting pain. Franklin's suffering flowed into her from every gentle, careful sentence; and to Helen, so unaware, till now, of any one's suffering but her own, this sharing of Franklin's was an experience new and overpowering. No tears came, while she held the letter and looked before her intently, and it was not as if her heart softened; but it seemed to widen, as if some greatness, irresistible and grave, forced a way into it. It widened to Franklin, to the thought of Franklin and to Franklin's suffering; its sorrow and its compassion were for Franklin; and as it received and enshrined him, it shut Gerald out. There was no room for Gerald in her heart. She would do part of what Franklin asked of her, of course. She would see Gerald; she would be kind to him; she would even try to feel for him. But the effort was easy because she was so sure that it would be fruitless. For Gerald, she was withered and burnt out. If she were to 'grow'--dear, funny phrases, even in her extremity, Helen could smile over them; even though she loved dear Franklin and enshrined him, his phrases would always seem funny to her--but if she were to grow it must be for Franklin, and in a different way from what he asked. She would indeed try not to become harder and drier; she would try to make of her life something not too alien from his ideal for her; she would try to pursue the just and the beautiful. But to rekindle the burnt-out fires of her love was a miracle that even Franklin's love and Franklin's suffering could not perform, and as for marrying Gerald in order to be a mother to him, she did not feel it possible, even for Franklin's sake, to assume that travesty. It was at five o'clock that she asked Gerald to come and see her. She went down to him in her sitting-room, when, on the stroke of the clock, he was announced. She felt that it required no effort to meet him, beyond the forcing of her weariness.