Was the war making her mad? Her "Yes!" was repeating itself in Helen's ears in a haunting, beating refrain as she hurried toward the house. She had played a lie; she had made a mockery of a man in his most serious mood! She had accepted an offer of marriage in Henriette's name! How was she to explain? What was she to do? With every turn of her groping flashes of thought for some solution, the wickedness and agony of her situation grew worse. In the doorway she met Henriette just coming out. Helen drew back as if she had been struck, cowed, her cheeks burning, her lips twitching, her eyes dull as with torture before an accuser. Henriette could only surmise that some accident had happened. "What is it? Why don't you speak?" she demanded. Henriette was going out into the garden and Phil might come to her with the words, "Don't forget; you said yes!" precipitating an awkward crisis. The force which he had put into his words was proof that he was no faint-hearted lover. "Why don't you speak? You look as if you had seen ghosts!" Henriette persisted. Helen's way of mending the error of one impulse had ever been with another impulse. "Not here!" she gasped. "In my room! Yes, Henriette, you must know!" When they were in the room and Helen, haggard and choking, faced Henriette, calm and wondering, the contrast between the two was at a climax. Something like appeal for sympathy appeared in Helen's eyes as she struggled for a beginning. Then without beginning she broke into laughter, which was prolonged until she was forced to wipe her eyes. "Well, I hope you have not gone out of your head!" said Henriette. "I refuse to see the fun of the thing until I know what it is." Laughter had pointed the way for Helen. "It would be funny if it were not so awful," she said. Between laughs, hectic laughs, she told the story of what had happened under the tree. "The joke was too good, shameful as it was. I couldn't help it. I said only a few words and looking the other way--it was so dark--he mistook my voice for yours--and what is to be done now?" Henriette's eyes were narrow slits, become like her mother's, and her lips tightly compressed made her mouth a short gash and drew down her nose till the cartilage of the thin bridge showed white. "Yes, what to do!" she said icily. "Why do you come to me?" "I--I don't know," Helen answered. "Oh!" said Henriette. Helen tried to smile, but it was a poor effort. "I couldn't resist the temptation. Don't you see, Henriette? It's the knot in my brain, I suppose." "But, I repeat, why do you come to me?" Helen was in an agony of confusion under her sister's glare. "I thought you'd like to know what he did intend for you--I----" "Leave my affairs to me!" "It was only one of my foolish impulses, Henriette!" Confined anger flashing rage from Henriette's eyes carried her forward a step. A storm burst on Helen's head.