"You sighed as if all life had fallen in ruins about your feet, and I couldn't help wondering if there were really no joy left to you." He smiled rather soberly, and did not at once reply. The fire burned cheerily on the hearth, noiseless for the most part, but now and then purring like a cat full of happy content; the shadows showed themselves more and more boldly in the corners, daring the firelight to chase them to discover their secrets. The colors of the room were softened into a dull richness; the dim gilding on the old books which had belonged to Helen's father, dead since her infancy, caught now and then a gleam from a tongue of flame which sprang up to peer into the gathering dusk; the copper tea equipage reflected a red glow, and gave to the picture a certain suggestion of comfort and cheer. "I was thinking how comfortable it is here," Philip said at length. "And that made you sigh?" "Yes; I'm ashamed to say that it came over me how far away from me all this is." "If it is," she returned slowly, "it is simply because you choose that it shall be." He turned his face toward her as if about to protest; then looked again into the fire. The conversation seemed ended, until Mrs. Herman spoke again as if nothing had been said. "You have been slumming this afternoon?" "I do not like the name, but I suppose I have." "It isn't a cheerful day to go poking about alone among the tenement houses." "I was not alone," Ashe answered with a hesitation which she could not help noting and with a significant softening of voice. "Mrs. Fenton was with me." "Ah!" The exclamation was involuntary. In an instant there had flashed upon Helen's mind a suspicion of the true state of things. The despondency of her cousin, the reflection upon the comfort of domesticity, connected themselves in her thought with trifling incidents which had before come under her observation; and his manner of speaking brought instantly to her mind the conviction that Ashe was thinking of Mrs. Fenton with more than the friendliness of acquaintanceship. When Philip looked up with a question in his eyes, however, she was already on her guard. "The weather is so doleful," she hastened to add, "that I should think that even philanthropy might lose its power of amusing." "Cousin Helen," returned he, with some hesitation, "I do not like to hear you speak in that way of what is part of my life work." She smiled; then sighed and shook her head. "My dear Philip," replied she, "I had certainly no intention of wounding you; and if you'll let me say so, I think you are going out of your way to find cause of offense. Philanthropy isn't a thing so sacred that it is not to be spoken of with a smile." "No; but"-- "But what?" He did not answer at once. He put down his empty cup absently, and then sat staring into the fire as if he were trying there to read the solution of the riddle of existence.