Laura put on her hat, took a basket, and went into the garden to gather fresh flowers for the house. Along the edges of the bowling-green stood rows of sunflowers, a golden show against the deep bronze of the thick beech hedges that enclosed the ground. Laura was trying, without much success, to reach some of the top blossoms of a tall plant when Helbeck came upon her. "Be as independent as you please," he said laughing, "but you will never be able to gather sunflowers without me!" In a moment her basket was filled. He looked down upon her. "You should live here--in the bowling-green. It frames you--your white hat--your grey dress. Laura!"--his voice leapt--"do I do enough to make you happy?" She flushed--turned her little face, and smiled at him--but rather sadly, rather pensively. Then she examined him in her turn. He looked jaded and tired. From want of sleep?--or merely from the daily fatigue of that long walk, foodless, to Whinthorpe for early Mass? That morning, as usual, by seven o'clock she had seen him crossing the park. A cheerless rain was falling from a grey sky. But she had never yet known him stopped by weather. There was a quick association of ideas--and she said abruptly: "Why did Mr. Williams say all that to you last night, do you suppose?" Helbeck's countenance changed. He sauntered on beside her, his hands in his pockets, frowning. But he did not reply, and she became impatient. "I have been reading a French story this morning," she said quickly. "There is a character in it--a priest. The author says of him that he had 'une imagination faussée et troublée.'" She paused, then added with great vivacity--"I thought it applied to someone else--don't you?" The fold in Helbeck's forehead deepened a little. "Have you judged him already? I don't know--I can't take Williams, you see, quite as you take him. To me he is still the strange gifted boy I taught to draw--whom I had to protect from his brutal father. He has chosen the higher life, and will soon be a priest. He is therefore my superior. But at the same time I think I understand him and his character. I understand the kind of impulse--the impetuosity--that made him do and say what he did last night." "It was our engagement, of course, that he meant--by your fall--the black cloud that covered you?" The impetuous directness was all Laura; so was the sensitive change in eye and lip. But Helbeck neither wavered, nor caressed her. He had a better instinct. He looked at her with a penetrating glance. "I don't think he quite knew what he meant. And you? Now I will carry the war into the enemy's country! Were you quite kind--quite right in doing what you did last night? Foolish or no, he was speaking in a very intimate way--of things that he felt deeply. It must have given him great pain to be overheard." Her breath fluttered.