if her standards were not merely ideal, visionary, the result of her training at home, in the atmosphere of the church, which stood apart from real life. But this thought always terrified her and she turned from it, instinctively feeling that if she were to lose her standards she should lose her hold on life itself. In the old days before their estrangement, Helen had never questioned her husband’s movements or had doubts in regard to them. She had trusted him always, as he had trusted her; indeed, the thought of the possibility of suspicion had not entered her mind. Now she wondered why he remained away so long from Waverly. Was it really because he had to be in Washington for business? He had been detained there one Summer before, by private business, but on Friday of each week he had made the long and fatiguing journey home. Could it be that he dreaded meeting her? It was true, she acknowledged, that she dreaded meeting him; but even more she dreaded his not coming. She suffered cruelly from the fear that he would become used to being away from her, that in time he would not miss her. It was only in her more desperate moods that she accused him of not missing her at all now. It was with regard to the children that Helen Briggs felt most concern for the future, especially with regard to her boy. How could she bring them up so that they should not fall upon disaster as she and Douglas had done? If temptation could so overcome Douglas, whom she had always looked on as unconquerable, what could she expect when Jack grew up? Already she had often talked with Douglas of the way they should help Jack to face the trials that boys have to meet. Sometimes Douglas laughed at her solicitude and said that she’d better not try to cross her bridges till she came to them. And she reflected, with a sinking of the heart, even while he was saying that, he knew that his own character had broken down. But she seldom reached this point in her speculations; she received a warning of the violence that would result to her own emotions. Throughout her self-torments, she never let herself believe the situation seemed hopeless. Something would happen, she felt sure, that would finally make everything right. But in her assurances, the mocking spirit of reason ridiculed her hope.