‘I do want your advice, Helena. I acted like a consequential fool towards you at one time. When your troubles overtook you, I was made thoroughly ashamed of myself. You behaved like a heroine. Tell me, should I accept or refuse? Give me your opinion, and, by heaven, I will abide by it! I can trust you.’ ‘Then accept! With your abilities and your responsibilities, you have no right to refuse.’ ‘I shall accept,’ was all he said, and there was silence for a time. Helena went on working, with how great, how immense an effort, he could not know. He sat and meditated on what he had done, on the fact that he had submitted his conscience to the guidance of a girl’s voice, and that since that voice had spoken, every hesitation, every doubt had vanished. Not a difficulty remained. ‘You will be almost certainly elected,’ said Helena, after a pause. ‘Then your life will be busier than ever. How will you manage?’ ‘That is a problem which is even now troubling me. I must have some help. I do not know where to turn for it. I am overwhelmed with business, really.’ ‘Are you? I wonder at you wasting your precious hours here,’ said Helena, and the moment after she had said it her face became crimson. ‘You think the time wasted, and you wonder that I should waste it here?’ said Sebastian, and looked at her steadily. Helena did, at this point, show a return of her former sensibility. The flush remained high in her cheeks. Her eyes fell, and her hands trembled as she resumed her work. Sebastian was much too good a tactician to lessen the value of the sign he had wrung from her, by coming to her assistance with any casual remark. He remained perfectly silent, till Helena, apparently finding the situation disturbing, started up, exclaiming impatiently. ‘How hot it is! Oh, how hot! My needle gets sticky, and I can’t work with a sticky needle.... When you are elected--and you are sure to be elected--you will, as you say, be very busy; but what an interesting kind of business! I shall often think----’ She stopped suddenly. ‘Never mind my life,’ said he, beginning to see where the power on his side, and the weakness on hers, really lay. ‘Tell me something about your own.’ ‘About mine--my life!’ said Helena, with a laugh. ‘That would indeed be an exciting history--too much for your nerves altogether, I fear.’ ‘Tell me, or I shall not know how to think of you. It is so annoying not to know the tenor of the life led by some person in whom one takes an interest. What is the name of the parents of your pupils?’ ‘Their name is Galloway.’ ‘What sort of people are they?’ ‘They are rich people.’ ‘That is nothing to the point.’ ‘They are people with fads, and yet they are very kind to me. I teach their children--as much as they will allow me, that is. They believe in letting the children grow up happy, and never punishing them, which means----’ Helena smiled.