He wanted help from her, but she gave him none, and again there was a silence in which Jim came through the door and put his head into Helen's hand. "Jim!" she said, "Jim!" Her thoughts went across a continent to blue water. "I'd begun to love her," he explained, and moved from one foot to the other. "George, I must go in." "But I don't love her now," he added fiercely, with pride, almost with reassurance. She would have laughed if she had heard him, but her numbness had passed by and all her powers were given to resisting the conviction that she was indeed Helen Caniper, born, to die, a woman; that Zebedee was on the sea, and had not ceased to love her, that she would have a tale to tell him on his return, and a dishonoured body to elude his arms, but she could not resist the knowledge, and under its gathering strength she cried out in a fury of pain that drove Halkett back a step. "What is it?" he asked. She did not answer. Her rage and misery left her weak and hopeless and though for a bright, flaming instant she had loathed him, she was now careless of him and of herself because nothing mattered any more. She drooped against the door, and he approached her nervously, saying as he went, "You're tired. You ought to go to bed. I'll take you to the house." That roused her and she looked at him. "No. Some one might hear." "I can tread softly." "Very well." She halted him among the poplars. "No further." "I'll come tomorrow," he whispered. "No, not tomorrow. Not until I tell you. I don't want any one to know. Don't come tomorrow." "Then come to me," he said. "I wish you'd come to me. I'd like to see you coming through our wood and across the cobbles. And in the morning, the sun's on that side of the house. Helen," he pleaded, "will you come?" It was Miriam who had come before, a dark sprite, making and loving mischief, lowering him in his own regard until he had a longing to touch bottom and make her touch it, too; but if Helen came in her grey frock, slipping among the trees like silver light, he knew she would bring healing to his home and to his heart. "Will you?" he begged. "Will you, Miss Helen? D'you remember how I used to call you that? Will you?" "I don't know." "But I want you so," he said; and when he would have touched her he found her gone. CHAPTER XXVI Her bargain had been made and must be kept and Zebedee would understand. He would not be angry with her: he had only been angry with her once, and he had always understood. He would feel her agony in that room at Halkett's Farm, with Miriam, white and stricken, on the floor, and George Halkett, hot and maddened, on the bed, and he would know that hers had been the only way. These were her thoughts as she went about the house, hasping windows and bolting doors, with a dreary sense of the futility of caution. "For you see, Jim, the horse is stolen already," she said.