"At any rate, you might choose a better place than Brighton," she retorted petulantly. "I might choose, but I don't," he retorted. "There's a good train service to Brighton, and it suits me. It will have to suit you, too." "I'm sure I would just as soon stay in London," Arthur interrupted; and he was rewarded by a glance of intense disdain from his sister's eyes. "No; you'll go to Brighton with the others." And Masterman, not knowing the private thoughts of Arthur, was gratified with his remark. He saw in it the evidence of that serious sense of duty which was presently to make him the kind of man for whom business is an imperious master. "You see, we must go somewhere. If we didn't, folk might talk. I've had a pretty hard time, my boy, but it's nearly over now. And I want you to go to Brighton for a reason of my own. There are some people there I'd like you to meet." "Of course I'll do as you wish, father." "That's the proper spirit," he replied kindly. But when Masterman left the room, Helen turned upon her brother spitefully. "Oh! you needn't think I don't know why you want to stop in London," she cried. "I know where you spend your evenings. You're not nearly so clever as you think you are." "Do you?" he replied, trying in vain to subdue the hot blood that rushed to his cheeks. "Yes, I do. And you just wait until father knows. I've a great mind to tell him." "You can tell him anything you wish," he replied proudly. "And do you wish it?" And with this Parthian shot she drew her small figure up in anger, and left the room. But the Parthian arrow left its wound, for it was tipped with subtle poison. Magic months are exquisite experiences; but the pity of it is that the magic is rarely so complete that the outlines of the plain world are totally obliterated. Helen's words were a sword that slashed a great rent in the purple curtains of young love, and the outer world lay visible. No use to turn the eyes away or to patch the rent; there lay the fact of things, palpable enough. Did he wish his father to know his love for Elizabeth? He had never yet faced the question. But the moment it was asked he saw with fatal prescience all that it implied. He had chosen not alone Elizabeth, but with her a path of life, an ideal of conduct. That path led out into a strange, uncharted world, the very existence of which his father had not so much as surmised. And he knew that his father never could be brought to see it.