“Suppose he should know of Arthur!” she muttered, clenching her hands until the nails cut her flesh. “Oh, what would he think then? And what could I tell him?” And she shrank back into the darkness, like a black and guilty thing. She crept around the side of the house and entered by another door, stealing into one of the darkened parlors, where she flung herself down upon a sofa and lay trembling before that new terror. When a few minutes had passed and she heard a carriage outside, she sprang up wildly, with the thought that he might be going. She had run half way to the door before she recollected that the carriage must be for the lieutenant, and then she stopped and stood still in the darkness, twisting her hands together nervously and asking herself what she could do. It occurred to her that she could look down the piazza from the window of the room, and so she went swiftly to it. The officer was just descending to the carriage, Mr. Roberts with him, and her aunt and Mr. Howard standing at the top of the steps, the latter's figure clearly outlined in the moonlight. Helen's heart was so full of despair and yearning just then that she could have rushed out and flung herself at his feet, had he been alone; but she felt a new kind of shrinking from her aunt. She stood hesitating, therefore, muttering to herself, “I must let him know about it somehow, and he will tell me what to do. Oh, I MUST! And I must tell him now, before it is too late!” She stood by the window, panting and almost choking with her emotion, kneading her hands one upon the other in frenzied agitation; and then she heard Mr. Howard say to her aunt, “I shall have to ask you to excuse me now, for I must not forget that I am an invalid.” And Helen clutched her burning temples, seeing him turn to enter the house, and seeing that her chance was going. She glanced around her, almost desperate, and then suddenly her heart gave a great leap, for just beside her was something that had brought one resource to her mind. She had seen the piano in the dim light, and had thought suddenly of the song that Mr. Howard had mentioned. “He will remember!” she thought swiftly, as she ran to the instrument and sat down before it. With a strength born of her desperation she mastered the quivering of her hands, and catching her breath, began in a weak and trembling voice the melody of Rubenstein: “Thou art as a flower, So pure and fair thou art; I gaze on thee, and sorrow Doth steal into my heart. “I would lay my hands upon thee, Upon thy snowy brow, And pray that God might keep thee So pure and fair as now.” Helen did not know how she was singing, she thought only of telling her yearning and her pain; she was so choked with emotion that she could scarcely utter a sound at all, and the song must have startled those who heard it. It was laden with all the tears that had been gathering in Helen's heart for days.