HELEN OF TROY _And_ ROSE [Illustration: “I want you” said Miss Lestrange, “to let my boy go.”] HELEN OF TROY _And_ ROSE BY PHYLLIS BOTTOME Author of “The Dark Tower,” “The Second Fiddle,” “The Derelict and Other Stories,” etc. ILLUSTRATED BY NORMAN OSBORN [Illustration] NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1918 * * * * * Copyright, 1918, by THE CENTURY CO. _Published, September, 1918_ TO MARJORIE AND GEORGE * * * * * CONTENTS PAGE HELEN OF TROY 3 ROSE 127 * * * * * ILLUSTRATIONS “I want you,” said Miss _Frontispiece_ Lestrange, “to let my boy go” “Because,” she whispered, “I 127 would take the risk--if you loved me” * * * * * HELEN OF TROY I Horace Lestrange was intent upon his occupation; he was throwing stones into the lake. He did it with skill and success; he made each stone jump four times, but he was using only his outer layer of attention; his inner self was turning over and over again a personal problem; he would have said he was thinking it out, but this was a mistake. The case was very plain and required no thought; he was only feeling it over, probing sensation to find how much weight it would bear, and at what point his heart would cry out to him to stop. Ten years ago he had lost his wife, after one year’s marriage. Perhaps, if she had lived, he would have grown tired of her; but she was very beautiful, and she had died when love was new and every golden day of her presence a thing divine and separate, intolerable to lose. She had left him something; instead of her love and her ripened youth, she had given him a baby son; he had put the child in his sister’s care and gone abroad. Annette used to go to church very devoutly, and Horace went to please her. He tried to suppose that Providence was in the right, but he said to his oldest friend (and this was the only comment he was heard to make upon his grief):