“I see your point,” he said. “That is so.” Then he turned to Helen. “So choose,” he said. “I settled it so.” Helen looked at Frank a moment and stood up, love streaming round her in triumphant flood, bearing her away. “I have chosen,” she said. “You know it.” Then, even in that moment, when she felt so strong, when her love was to her like a draught of wine or meat to the hungry, her strength utterly failed her, and she buried her head on the cushions of the sofa where she had been sitting and burst into hopeless, hysterical sobbing. She was not capable of more; all had given way, and she lay helpless, sobbing, sobbing, as if to sob her heart out. But four hands were busy about her, and as the stress of her seizure began to leave her, she heard two voices, for the moment one. And one said, “Helen darling,” and the other, “Helen dear;” and one said, “If you would be so kind, Lord Yorkshire, there is some water on the table;” and the other said, “Helen, would you like to drink a little water?” For two men in nature, in sympathy, in religion poles apart were bound together for a moment in the necessity divine and human of comforting the weak, of giving help to a sufferer. She who suffered was loved by them both, and though the distance of fifty poles could not span the difference between their ways of love, that was sufficient. For myriads are the ways of approaching the throne where all love dwells. From east and west and north and south those myriad ways converge and meet. But at present east and west, being human, and thinking that they were going in opposite ways, could not foretell the meeting. But the Centre knew. By degrees she came to herself again, and one said, “Some other time,” and the other, “Not again now, Helen.” So of the three she was the only one who was resolved to go on, to have this ghastly spiritual surgery finished. Though she had chosen, she knew there was more that had to be said. She cast one glance at her father, but her physical weakness over, his pity, she saw, was over also. A gulf immeasurable by leagues had opened between them, and though not even yet did he despair that they would be forever disunited, it was she who must come to him. From the firm rock on which he stood he knew, so he believed, that he would never stir a step. She pushed back her hair from her forehead. “I don’t know why I did that,” she said. “It was stupid of me. Give me a minute.” She got up, still a little unsteadily, and played with the pens in the tray on the writing-table, recovering herself. Then she turned suddenly to her father. “Father,” she said, “you can’t mean what you say. How can I choose between you? What are you asking me to do? What do you mean?”