Every one stood up. Gage was standing too, with the rest, his vagrant thoughts brought back from their wanderings to the ever shocking realization that he was helping in the laying away of this friend of his and the inevitable feeling that life was a short business for him and every one. He fell back into triteness. You must play the game. After it was all over he was standing beside Helen. “I want to go to see Margaret,” said Helen. “I’ll go to her hotel now, Gage.” “Bring her home if you like,” answered Gage. The ease of his tone startled Helen. She looked at him in quick surprise, meeting his unexpected smile. “I merely meant I thought I could be reasonably civil,” he said--and with impulse, “I feel rather cleaned out, Helen. I’ll run down town now and see what I can do before dinner.” She thought, “He hasn’t had anything to drink for two days,” placing the responsibility for his unwonted pleasantness on a practical basis. It cheered her. She went to Margaret’s hotel and found her in her room, lying on her bed and her head buried in the counterpane. It was the nearest to abandonment that Helen had ever seen in her friend so she ventured to try to comfort. “It’s the awful blackness of his mind that I can’t bear,” said Margaret, “the feeling he must have had that there was no way out.” She sat up and looked at Helen somewhat wildly. “It frightens me too. For he had such a good mind. He saw things straight. Perhaps there isn’t any way out. Perhaps we are battering our heads against life and each other like helpless fools.” “Did you love him?” asked Helen. It seemed to her the only vital point just then. Margaret threw her hands out futilely. “I don’t know. I was afraid of what might happen if we married. Either way it looked too dangerous. I was afraid of softening too much--of lapsing into too much caring--or of not being able to care at all. He wasn’t afraid--but I was. And--the rotten part is, Helen, that I wasn’t afraid for him but for myself.” She was hushed for a moment and then broke out again. “It wasn’t for myself as myself. It was just that if our marriage hadn’t been a miracle of success, it would have proved the case against women again.” “You mustn’t think any more than you can help,” said Helen. “It wasn’t like Walter to want to cause you pain and I know he wouldn’t want you to suffer now.” “No, he was willing to do all the suffering,” said Margaret in bitter self-mockery. “He did it too.” She got hold of herself by one swift motion of her well-controlled mind and stood up, brushing her hair back with the gesture Walter loved. “It’s not your burden, poor girl. You have enough.” “Not so many,” said Helen. “By the way, Margaret, you haven’t heard about Freda Thorstad, have you?” “Did she come back?” “No--she wrote. She had married Gregory Macmillan secretly when he was here. They sent her word that he had typhoid out West and she went to him. Why she didn’t tell people is still a mystery.”