* * * * * True to his promise, Frank Gleason had a plan, of a sort, ready by morning. He told it at the breakfast table. "I'm going to take you to my sister, provided, of course, that you agree," he announced. "Five minutes' talk with her on this matter will be worth five years' with me. I shouldn't wonder if she kept you herself,--for a time, with her. And you couldn't be in a better place. Perhaps you'll be willing to help her with the children--and she'll be glad of that, I know." "But--my money--can't I pay--money?" faltered Helen. He shook his head. "Not if we can help it. Your money you'll need later for Miss Dorothy--unless you are willing to make yourself known to your husband sooner than you seem now to be willing to. We'll invest it in something safe and solid, and it'll bring you in a few hundred a year. You'll have that to spend; and that will go quite a way--under some circumstances." "But I--I want to--to learn things, you know," stammered Helen; "how to be--be--" "You'll learn--lots of things, if you live with my sister," remarked the doctor significantly. "Oh!" smiled Helen, with a sigh of relief and content. The doctor sighed, too,--though not at all with either relief or content. To the doctor, the task before him loomed as absurd and unreal as if it were, indeed, the pulling-down of the stars and the moon--the carrying-out of his extravagant promise of the night before. CHAPTER XII THE TRAIL OF THE INK Burke Denby was well pleased with the letter that he had sent to his wife, enclosing the ten-thousand-dollar check. He felt that it was both conclusive and diplomatic; and he believed that it carried a frankness that would prove to be disarming. He had every confidence that Helen would eventually (if not at once) recognize its logic and reasonableness, and follow its suggestions. With a light heart, therefore, he gave himself up to the enjoyment of the day with his father. By Saturday, however, a lively curiosity began to assail him as to just how Helen did take the note, after all. There also came unpleasantly to him a recurrence of the uncomfortable feeling that his abrupt departure from home Thursday night had been neither brave nor kind, and, in fact, hardly decent, under the circumstances. He decided that he would, when he saw Helen, really quite humble himself and apologize roundly. It was no more than her due, poor girl! By Sunday, between his curiosity and his uneasy remorse, he was too nervous really to enjoy anything to the full; but he sternly adhered to his original plan of not going down to the Dale Street flat before Monday, believing, in his heart, that nothing could do so much good to both of them, under the circumstances, as a few days of thought apart from each other. Monday, however, found him headed for Dale Street; but in an hour he was back at Elm Hill. He was plainly very angry.