"So you have come home to live?" I asked. "Yes!" She sank down on a workman's bench, with a sigh of weariness. As I looked at her more closely, it seemed to me that at last age had touched her. There were white strands in her black hair, and there were deep circles beneath the dark eyes--eyes that were dull from looking without seeing anything in particular. "It was best for Henry," she added quietly. "He is restless over there. You see, he forgets everything so quickly now. It has been so for nearly a year." There was the story of her days--the watcher and keeper of this childish man, whose mind was fading away before its time. With a sense of the cruelty in it, I turned away from her hastily and looked out of the window. "I do not mind, most times," she said gently, as in answer to my action. "It is easier to bear than some things of life." "Shame!" I muttered. "But there are days," she burst out more like her old self, "when I simply cannot stand it! But let us not waste these precious minutes with my troubles. Let us talk of _you_. You are still young in spite of--" "The gray hair and the two hundred and forty pounds? I don't feel so young as I might, Jane!" She colored at the sound of her name. "But you have got much for your gray hairs--you have lived more than most men!" "Tell me," I demanded suddenly,--"I know it was your hand that pulled me from the last hole. It was your money that Carboner risked? I knew it. Old Carboner wouldn't tell, but I knew it!" "And you were on the point of refusing my help," she added with an accusing smile. "I should have scorned you, if you had gone away without it!" "Oh, I didn't hesitate long! And I am glad now it was yours, in more ways than one," I added quickly. "It was a profitable deal,--Carboner wrote you the terms?" "Yes, but it would have made no difference if it had come out badly--you can't know what it meant to me to do that! To work with you with all my strength! It was the first real joy I ever got from my money, and perhaps the last, too. For you are beyond my help now." "How did Carboner get hold of your husband's stock?" I persisted curiously. "That is my secret!" she smiled back with a look of her old self. "Why should you want to know? That is so like a man! Always wanting to know why. Believe in the fairies for once!" "It was a mighty clever fairy this time. She had lots of power. Do you see that, after all, in spite of all the talk about genius and destiny and being self-made and all that, I did not win the game by myself? I would have been broke now, a discredited gambler, if it hadn't been for your helping hand. It was you! And I guess, Jane, we all have to have some help." "You don't begrudge me the little help I gave you--the small share I had in your fortune?" "No, I don't mind. I am glad of it." That was sincere enough. I had come to see that no man can stand alone, and I was not ashamed to have taken my help from the hand of a woman.