Helena laughed. "A child indeed? If you could have heard him this week!" She suddenly grew hostile. "Why," she demanded passionately, "should everything in the house hinge round _his_ career? Why am I not to write another book? Is it because I am a woman? Mine has sold better than all his put together and yet I'm not to do another! I'm just to sit at home, here in this tiny room, while _he_ works and says we've no money! No, I utterly refuse. I've got an offer and I mean to take it." Ruth looked troubled, feeling that she had been confident too soon. "Helena," she said very gently, thrusting the name forward to make peace, "I'm not going to ask you to give up your career; I'm asking you to spare Hugh his illusions." "I don't see," answered Helena, suspicious. "No," said the other, and then paused. Helena thought that she had finished, when she suddenly began again. "I've been alone a good deal these three years, and I have thought a lot about marriage. Oh, not for myself, no" (she spoke so sadly that Helena relented for a moment); "but because my life now is so different from the one I spent with Hubert, and that makes one think. You know, if I'd my life to live again, I'd live it all alone--I'm afraid, yes, I'd sacrifice Hubert: men are born to marry, not to live with sisters!--but I'd have my life-work." "And yet," swiftly interrupted Helena in triumph, "you ask me to give up mine?" "I don't." She spoke decisively. "I only ask you not to sacrifice Hubert's to it." "I still don't understand." Her voice was almost resentful. "Hubert married you," began Ruth expansively, "because he is the sort of man who needs encouragement. He wanted some one who'd think his work wonderful and ask him how he did it. You surely see the difference? Imagine his life now, for any one like him: your bigger sales, your long reviews, your photographs, his own eclipse. It is impossible." Helena remembered the press-notice and spoke more obediently. "What are you asking me to do then?" "Leave him." The words dropped out like heavy weights. "Leave him?" cried Helena, and by a natural dramatic instinct she rose from her chair. "Leave him when I'm fond of him?" Ruth looked very earnest. "Leave him," she said again, "unless you're fond enough of him to give up your career. I tell you--I _know_--you can not have both, with Hubert." "You cannot serve God and Mammon," murmured Helena. She did not know that she had said it. She sank down into her chair again and forced her numb brain to thought.