Helen's creditors have proved more than reasonable, with the exception of the furniture people; their demands were such that there seemed no alternative but to surrender the goods. As the men who came for them advanced into the room, stammering questions about the articles they were to remove, Helen struggled to her feet and started to meet them, then stopped, clutching at a table for support. Their eyes never left her face. "Are they takin' your things, Sis?" asked Mr. Winship. Her feverish glance answered him. "What's to pay?" he inquired. "Want to keep the stuff, Boss?" asked the head packer. "Yes," I said, seeing her distress, and resolving desperately to find the means, somehow. "It ain't none o' your look-out," interposed Mr. Winship. "Sis ain't a-goin' to be beholden to her husband, not till she's married. Ezry Winship al'ays has done for his own, an' he proposes to do, jes' as fur's he's able. Sis'll tell ye I hain't stented her--What's to pay?" I couldn't see all his savings go for gauds! "You may take the goods," I said to the men, with sudden revulsion of feeling. "There's no room for them," I added gruffly to Mr. Winship, "in our--the rooms--where we are to live." "All right, Boss," said the head packer; "which gent speaks for the lady?" "Father!" Helen gasped. "What's to pay?" insisted Mr. Winship. "Take the goods," I repeated. "All right, Boss;" and the two men went about their work, still glancing at us with sidelong looks of curiosity. Helen gazed at me with eyes that stabbed. Then slowly her glance dulled. She dropped on a packing box and sat silent--a bowed figure of despair--forgetting apparently that she was not alone. Mr. Winship made no further attempt to interfere with events. He stood by Helen's side, puzzled and taciturn. I, too, was silent, reproaching myself for the brutality of my action, unable to decide what I should have done or ought to do. Helen herself had suggested that we give up the furniture, and I had not mourned the necessity, for I hated the stuff, with its reminders of the General and the Whitney woman and Bellmer and the Earl and all those strange people that I used to see around her. But I might have known that she could not, all at once, wean herself from the trumpery. A minute later Clesta ushered in the man who was to take the trunks, and when I had given him his directions, I asked:-- "Shall we go, Nelly?" "If ye ain't reconciled to movin'--" Mr. Winship began. But Helen answered neither of us. Her eyes were bent upon the floor, and a look, not now of resentment, but of--was it fear?--had slowly crept upon her face. Her hands were clenched. Darmstetter! Instinct--or memory of my careless words spoken but a little earlier--told me the truth. The growing pallor of her cheek spoke her thought. How that tragedy haunts her! The face I looked upon was at the last almost ghastly. "Nelly--" I said, very gently.