"I am glad I am going away," she exclaimed with a sigh. "Going away?" he echoed, dropping his modeling tools. "Yes, I sail Saturday." She spoke with perfect composure, yet her glance was averted. She was painfully conscious of having concealed the fact from him until this moment. He came towards her, his eyes fixed upon her face. "What does this mean?" he demanded, almost fiercely. "Why do you go?" "I mean to study in Rome," she replied faintly. "I always told you that I hoped to go some day." "But why do you go now? Why have you concealed it from me? Are you afraid of my--of my love? If any one must go it should be I; I have no right to drive you away." "You are not driving me away; I--it is better that I should go." "But why go now? Now you are free, and I have a right to claim you." "No," Helen said in a voice suddenly firm, but which yet showed her inward agitation, "no; there is Ninitta. I have suffered too much myself to be willing to try to come to happiness over any woman's heart. It is better that I should go." "Ninitta!" Herman burst out. "She has no claim; she will not even care; she--" "No," interrupted Helen, laying her hand upon his arm. "You cannot say that; you know it is not true. You can see as well as I that Ninitta is pining her life out over your neglect. We are not free to break her heart when you yourself taught her to love." "I have never been unkind to her," he said, a little defiantly; "except perhaps when she acted like a mad woman and broke your figures." "In love," returned Helen, smiling faintly, and glad to take refuge in generalities, "sins of commission, as compared with the deadly sin of omission, are mere venial offenses. It is not what you have done, but what you have left undone." "But what can I do? I cannot force myself to love her?" "You have made her love you." "But I outgrew her centuries ago." "The price of growth is always to outgrow," replied Helen. She was struggling hard to keep the conversation away from dangerous levels. She felt that she must seem heartless, but none the less she went on bravely. "And after all what is outgrowing? It is a question of moods, of--" But her courage failed her. Her voice trembled, she turned away from him and walked down the studio, stopping here and there as if to examine a cast or a figure, invisible through the tears which welled up in her eyes. The sculptor followed close behind her, until she put her hand upon the great Oran rug which hung before the door. "Then you leave me," he broke out bitterly. "You make Ninitta a pretext for escaping me. You might have told me that you did not care for me. I would not have molested you." She turned to him suddenly, and he was startled by the whiteness of her face, for she was pale to the very lips.