It was not until Thursday that she had told Lois why she had come back. They were in their pleasant sitting-room, Lois walking restlessly about, with such puzzled expectation on her face that its white sadness was almost banished. Helen sat with her hands clasped loosely in her lap, and leaning her head against the window. Below, there was the bloom and glory of the garden, butterflies darted through the sunshine, and the air was full of the honeyed hum of the bees. But the silence of the room seemed only a breathless anxiety, which forbade rest of mind or body; and so Helen had roused herself, and tried to tell her cousin what it all meant; but even as she talked she felt Lois's unspoken condemnation of her husband, and her voice hardened, and she continued with such apparent indifference Lois was entirely deceived. "So you see," she ended, "I cannot go back to Lockhaven." Lois, walking back and forth, as impatient as her father might have been, listened, her eyes first filling with tears, and then flashing angrily. She threw herself on her knees beside Helen, as she finished, and put her arms about her cousin's waist, kissing her listless hands in a passion of sympathy. "Oh, my dear!" she cried, her cheeks wet with tears, "how dreadful--how horrible! Oh, Helen, darling, my poor darling!" Lois did not stop to consider the theological side of the matter, which was a relief to Helen. She tried to quiet the young girl's distress, holding her bright head against her breast, and soothing her with gentle words. "If I were you," Lois said at last, "I would go back to Lockhaven; I would _go_, if it had to be in disguise!"-- "Not if you loved John," Helen answered. "How can you bear it?" Lois whispered, looking up into the calm face with a sort of awe which checked her tears. "It is so cruel, Helen, you cannot forgive him." "There is nothing to forgive; I hoped you would understand that, Lois. John cannot do anything else, don't you see? Why, I would not love him as I do, if, having such convictions, he was not true to them. He must be true before anything else." Lois was sitting on the floor in front of her, clasping her knees with her arms, and rocking back and forth. "Well," she cried hotly, "I don't understand anything about his convictions, but I tell you what it is, Helen, I do understand how hard it is for you! And I can never forgive him, if you can. It is all very well to think about truth, but it seems to me he ought to think about you." "But don't you see," Helen explained, still vaguely hoping that Lois would understand, "he thinks only of me? Why, Lois, it is all for me." Lois's face was flushed with excitement. "I don't care!" she cried, "it is cruel--cruel--cruel!" Helen looked at her steadily a moment, and then she said patiently, "The motive is what makes cruelty, Lois. And can't you see that it is only because of his love that he does this? If he loved me less, he could not do it."