"Why not?" he said, affronted. "Because I don't want them, just for their own happiness, to do what seems to me wrong." "Wrong! If the law permits it, you can't say 'wrong.'" "_I_ think it is," she said timidly; then tried to explain that it seemed to her that no one, for his own happiness, had a right to do a thing which would injure an ideal by which the rest of us live; "I don't express it very well," she said, flushing. Robert Ferguson snorted. "That's high talk; well enough for angels; but no men and mighty few women are angels. I," he interrupted himself hurriedly, "I don't like angel women myself." She smiled a little sadly. "And besides that," she said, "it seems to me we ought to take the consequences of our sins. I think they ought, all three of them, to just try and make the best of things. Robert, did it ever strike you that making the best of things was one way of entering the Kingdom of Heaven?" He gave her a tender look, but he shook his head. "Helena," he said, gently, "do you mind telling me how you finally brought them to their senses that night? Don't if you'd rather not." Her face quivered. "I would rather. There was only one way; I ... told them, Robert." There was a moment of silence, then Robert Ferguson twitched his glasses off and began to polish them. "You are an angel, after all," he said. Then he lifted a ribbon falling from her waist, and kissed it. "I sha'n't try to influence either David or Elizabeth," she said; "they will do what they think right; it may not be _my_ right--" "It won't be," he told her, dryly; "once a man is free to marry his girl, mothers take a back seat." She smiled wisely. "Oh, you can smile; but, my dear Helena, the apron-string won't do for a man who is thirty years old. Yes, they'll do as they choose, in spite of either you or me--and _I_ know what it will be!" "Poor Blair," she said, sighing. "Robert, if she leaves him you will be kind to him, won't you? He's never had a chance--" But he was not thinking of Blair; he was looking into her face, and his own face moved with emotion: "Helena, don't be obstinate any longer. We have so little time left! I don't ask you to love me, but just marry me, Helena." "Oh, my dear Robert--" "Will you?" "If I lived here," she said breathlessly, "my boy could not come to see me." "Is that the reason you won't say yes?" She was silent. "Will you?" he said again. Her voice was so low he could hardly hear her answer: "No." And at that his face glowed with sudden, amazed assurance. "Why," he cried, "_you love me!_" She looked at him beseechingly. "Robert, please--" "Life has been good to me, after all," he said, joyously: "I've got what I don't deserve!" Helena was silent. THE END