Helen rode on pensively sweet and preoccupied. She rode somewhat in advance of Kit; the honest boy thought that it was to hide her face. He was right, but by inversion; Helen wanted Kit to see her back, which she had been told was provocatively graceful on horseback. He felt, as he had repeatedly felt in this visit of hers, that he did not know her. The Helen of her exhortation to him he knew, keen-witted, worldly, strong-willed, but this girl? Gentle, wistful, affectionate, dependent, almost child-like in appeal for sympathy? This was another Helen; this one might be as lovable as the other was dazzling. Suddenly she turned to Kit, resting her hand on her saddle, swinging halfway around in it to face him. “Kit, you don’t understand women,” she said with a quaver in her voice. “Perhaps I mean girls, _a_ girl, _this_ girl! Can’t you see how one may be defeated in victory? How little it means to be pretty, clever, rich, admired, when one is all alone? Father is a dear to me, but he can’t play the game of politics for such high stakes as those he is out for and have much time to spare for his girl. Well! I pretend a lot, but I don’t mind my old pal’s knowing that I’m just plain girl, and no goddess, not even an ambitious woman at heart. Daphne Woods stirs in me everything that I fight down. It doesn’t do to let it poke up its head to be fed when I can’t feed it! It’s too lovely in here, too ideal to be good for me. Oh, Kit, take me home!” Kit’s heart beat faster. Helen was intoxicating with her eyes downcast, her voice low and vibrant. Her simple, direct appeal moved him by the pathos of its revelation of sweetness where he had known only hardness; of weakness where he had thought there was only self-reliant strength. “Why, Nell, dear,” he cried, “I didn’t know you felt like this! Spring in the woods always sets me off, too. Funny how all human beings are casting about for something, they’re not sure just what. Nature gets us going, doesn’t it? October is as bad as May, in another way. Yet it is a sweet sorrow, don’t you think? Something like parting! Sure, I’ll take you home. You’re probably tired, too. Lunch will be ready by the time we get there.” Helen swung back again in her saddle and turned Jack-of-Spades sharply. Then she looked hard at Kit and laughed, her softened mood flung from her. “It’s hard telling, Christopher Carrington, whether you’re a bit clever, or more than a bit stupid,” she said, and rode ahead of him, Jack-of-Spades on a gallop, toward the end of the woods. Kit went up to his room to get out of his riding clothes into his daily attire. He was slow about it; considering hard, puzzled, interested, confused in thought, clearer in impressions than he liked to admit.