BOOK III

CO-PARTNER WITH NATURE

XXIII

Helen received the heart-breaking news from Alfonse with a degree of control which surprised even Uncle Peabody. Her questions were few, but so vital in their directness that by the time she had learned the nature and the seriousness of the accident, and the location of the cottage where her husband's body lay, she was hurrying to the scene of the calamity.

"Do you know where to reach an American or English surgeon?" she promptly asked Uncle Peabody, and his affirmative reply as he hastened to the telephone was the last word she heard as she left the villa.

Once in the cottage, she followed the guidance of the weeping, awe-struck peasants, who silently pointed out to her the room of death. She opened the door, and crossed the room with a firm step. Sinking to her knees beside the bed, she buried her face for a brief moment in her hands--then she rose quickly to her feet. With the help of the woman who had entered with her, she lifted Inez' inert figure from across her husband's body.

"She has fainted, poor child!" she said, quietly, divining that the girl's insensibility was not serious. "Let us take her into the next room."

Leaving the woman to provide for Inez' necessities, and giving her instructions how to act, Helen turned from the improvised cot to go back to Jack. His hands were still warm, but she could find no perceptible pulsation. She loosened his collar and moved his head a little to one side, discovering the wound for the first time. A cry of pain burst from her as she drew back sick and dizzy, her lips quivering and tears starting to her eyes. Then she leaned over him again, gently washing away the slight flow of blood with a moist cloth which one of the women handed her.

"Look!" she cried, pathetically, to Uncle Peabody, who entered the room a moment later, pointing to the wound and gazing into his eyes with her own distended by her suffering and her sense of helplessness.

Uncle Peabody put his arm about her, and rested his other hand upon Armstrong's wrist. "Dr. Montgomery will be here in a moment, Helen," he said, quietly, feeling instinctively that this was no time for words of sympathy. "I caught him at the Grand Hotel, and there was a motor-car at the door."

"He is dead!" was Helen's response, piteous in its intensity.

"Perhaps not, dear," replied Uncle Peabody, soothingly. "Let us stand by the window until the doctor comes."

Helen refused to suffer herself to be led away from her husband's side.

"I can't," she said, simply, shaking her head; "I must watch over him."

Then she turned back to resume her self-appointed vigil, and suddenly found herself looking into his open eyes.

"Jack!" she cried, seizing his face in her hands as she again sank upon her knees--"oh, Jack!"

She could find no other words in the revulsion which swept over her. Her cry quickly brought Uncle Peabody, and the women drew near to behold the miracle of the dead brought to life; but all except Helen fell back as the doctor entered.

"He lives, doctor!" she exclaimed exultantly, her face radiant with joy.

"Then there is hope," he replied, with a reassuring smile, as he began the examination of his patient.

Helen followed every motion as the doctor proceeded, encouraged by the confidential little nods he made at the conclusion of each process, as if answering in the affirmative certain questions which he put to himself. Armstrong again opened his eyes as the doctor carefully investigated the depth of the wound, and his lips moved slightly. Helen impulsively drew nearer, but the sound was barely articulate.

The doctor drew back the lids and peered intently into his open eyes, nodding again to himself. At length he turned to the silent group about him, who so eagerly waited for the verdict.

"Will he live?" was Helen's tense question as she seized his arm.

Dr. Montgomery looked into the upturned face with a kindly smile. "I hope so, Mrs. Armstrong," he answered, quietly. "It is a severe concussion of the brain, and we must await developments."

"Are there unfavorable signs?" asked Uncle Peabody, anxiously.

"No; quite the contrary so far. There is no fracture of the skull, and the normal size of the pupils shows no serious injury to the brain."

"The unconsciousness is due simply to the concussion?"

"Exactly."

"Then what do you fear?"

"There is always danger of meningitis. We can tell nothing about this until later."

"Will it be safe to move him?" asked Helen.

"Yes; and you had better do so. I must dress and sew up the wound, and then he can be carried home on a stretcher. Suppose you leave me alone with him now, while I make his head a bit more presentable."

Helen's buoyancy was contagious as she and Uncle Peabody started to leave the room, but Jack's voice recalled them.

"It is--the symbolism--of the period," he muttered, incoherently.

"It is all right," the doctor replied to Helen's startled, unspoken interrogation. "He is delirious, and will be so for days."

Satisfied with the explanation, they passed through the door into the next room, where they found Inez sitting weakly in an arm-chair, her hair dishevelled, her face white as marble, supported by the woman in whose care she had been left.

Helen hurried to her. "He is not dead!" she cried, joyfully--"do you hear, Inez? Jack is alive, and the doctor thinks he will recover!"

Inez answered with a fresh flood of tears. "Oh, Helen! Helen!" she murmured, clinging impulsively to her arm.

Helen's recovery came much more spontaneously than did Inez'. With the one the pendulum had made a completed swing, and the depths at one extreme had been offset by the heights at the other. Inez, however, was hopelessly distraught by the accumulated weight of a multitude of emotions: the physical shock of the accident, the horror of the situation as it first burst upon her with unmitigated force, the involuntary tearing from her heart of the mask it had worn for so many months--and now the painful joy of the reaction. She rested in her chair, almost an inert mass, in total collapse of mind and body.

"I could not help it, Helen," she murmured, piteously, as her friend pushed back the dishevelled hair from her hot forehead.

"Of course you could not, dear," Helen cried, smiling through her tears of joy at the obvious relief her words gave. "Oh, I am so happy, Inez!"

Helen's face grew pale again as her thoughts returned to those first awful moments, which now seemed so long ago. "I really thought him dead, Inez," she continued, after a moment's silence. "We could not have endured that, could we, dear? Now we will take him to the villa and nurse him back to health and strength. How strange it will seem to him not to be able to do things for himself!"

"Is he--badly hurt?" ventured Inez.

"The doctor can't tell yet, but he feels encouraged."

"Is he--conscious?"

"Not wholly--and the doctor says he will be delirious for days."

"Oh," replied Inez, again relaxing.

Dr. Montgomery quietly entered the room, carefully closing the door after him. "All goes well," he replied to the questions before they were put to him. "The patient is resting quietly and may be moved as soon as a stretcher can be secured. Your villa is near by, I think Mr. Cartwright said?"

"The stretcher is being prepared," replied Uncle Peabody, answering the doctor's question, "and I have sent for two strong men."

"Good. Have I another patient here?" Dr. Montgomery turned to Inez.

"She is suffering only from the shock," answered Helen.

"Let me take you both home in my motor-car," suggested the doctor.

"Take Miss Thayer," Helen replied, quickly.

"Oh no!" Inez shuddered; "I can never enter one of those awful things again!"

Dr. Montgomery smiled indulgently. "It will really be better, Miss Thayer, and I will personally guarantee your safe arrival."

"I would rather walk beside the stretcher," Helen continued; "there might be something I could do."

The doctor bowed as he acquiesced. "Your husband will require very little to be done for him for some days, Mrs. Armstrong," he said; "but if you prefer to stay near him your suggestion is better than mine."

"Did he speak again, doctor?" asked Helen.

"Yes," he replied, with a professional shrug; "but he said nothing. You must pay no attention to his ramblings. His mind will remain a blank until Nature supplies the connecting link. In the mean time he will require simply quiet and rest."

Uncle Peabody's stretcher was soon ready for service, and the still unconscious burden was gently lifted upon it and carried with utmost tenderness up the hill to the villa, where old Giuseppe and the maids received the party with unaffected joy at the good news that their master would survive the accident that had befallen him. With the aid of the trained nurse they found awaiting them, Armstrong was carefully transferred from the stretcher to his own bed, Inez was made comfortable in her room, and the doctor sat down upon the veranda with Helen and Uncle Peabody, who welcomed a moment's rest after the wearing experience of the past hour.

"Tell us the probabilities of the case, Dr. Montgomery," said Uncle Peabody. "Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong were planning to return to Boston soon, and now it will of course be necessary to rearrange their plans."

"Naturally," assented the doctor. "I will tell you all I can. These cases are somewhat uncertain, but the patient's delirium will surely last for several days. Then comes a slow period of convalescence, during which time the body repairs much more rapidly than the mind. You cannot count on less than two months, even with everything progressing favorably."

Uncle Peabody glanced over to where Helen was sitting.

"I don't care how long it takes," she replied to his implied interrogation, "so long as he gets well."

Dr. Montgomery smiled as he rose to take his leave. "My patient is evidently in good hands," he said. "The nurse will do all that needs to be done until I return in the course of an hour or two."

Helen and Uncle Peabody sat in silence for some moments after the doctor departed. There was nothing further to be done for the present, as both Jack and Inez were resting as comfortably as could be expected under the circumstances, and absolute quiet was the one thing needful.

"Well," said Uncle Peabody, at length, "it is the unexpected which has happened again."

"Yes," Helen assented without looking up; "if it keeps on happening with such startling regularity I shall begin to expect it, and then your theory will lose its point."

Uncle Peabody was in a thoughtful rather than an argumentative mood.

"If I was not afraid you would think me heartless, Helen, I would say that I believe I see the hand of Providence in this."

She looked up quickly.

"Of course, assuming that Jack recovers," he hastened to add.

"I am afraid my philosophy is hardly equal to this test," Helen replied, unsympathetically. "I am supremely happy that the affair is not so serious as it seemed at first, but I can't see anything particularly providential in the injury poor Jack has sustained, nor in the suffering he must pass through at best."

"Is it not just possible that this long period of convalescence, which Dr. Montgomery says is inevitable, may bring him to himself again?"

Helen smiled sadly. "It was the work at the library which brought him to himself, uncle. A separation from those influences which so strongly affected him there may result in a return to the old self I knew before we came here; but that is not his real self."

"If he returns to that condition, no matter what brings it about, will it not simplify matters?"

"I can't see how," replied Helen, seriously. "If I had never known this new development in Jack's nature, I should of course be quite content to have him return to his former self; but having seen him as he really is, I could never accept any condition which allows him no development of his higher and stronger personality. It would not be fair either to him or to me."

Uncle Peabody regarded Helen curiously. "Let me make myself clearer," he said, with considerable emphasis. "Only this very morning you were discussing with me the final outcome of what appeared to be a domestic tragedy. Your husband was controlled by the spell of the old-time learning which had reached out from its antiquity to grasp a modern convert. You were convinced that Miss Thayer's sentiments toward your husband had developed into affection, and you stated in so many words that if Jack did not reciprocate this affection he really ought to do so, because she was the one woman in the world qualified by nature to be his wife. In the presence of this overwhelming condition you very generously planned--and I expressed to you how much I admired your spirit--to eliminate yourself, and to sacrifice your own happiness in order to enable your husband to accomplish his destiny."

"You are making sport of me--it is most unkind!" she cried, reproachfully.

"You know I wouldn't do that," insisted Uncle Peabody. "I am merely presenting a simple statement of the case in order to prove my original assertion. Please let me continue. Just as the crisis seems to be at hand this accident occurs. In a most unexpected manner Jack is instantly divorced from the influences which have drawn him away from you. The break between him and Miss Thayer has been accomplished naturally, and he has been placed in his wife's hands to be nursed back to health--during which experience you both will come to know each other far better than ever before. Again I say--I believe I see the hand of Providence in the whole affair."

Helen waited to make quite sure that Uncle Peabody had finished. "I wonder if it is I who always see things differently," she said, "or if a man's viewpoint is of necessity different from a woman's. I love Jack more than I can ever express--and this accident has brought that devotion nearer to the surface than I have dared to let it come for many weeks. I have suffered in seeing him drawn away from me, and in realizing that I was becoming less and less essential to his life. Yet, through it all, I have understood. I have suffered to think that any other woman could be more to him than I am, but my love has not blinded my eyes to what I have actually seen. These are conditions which cannot be changed, even by this accident. Suppose it does separate him from all those influences which have brought about the crisis, as you call it; suppose that because of this separation, and the physical weakness through which he must pass, Jack turns to me as before, and for the time being believes that I am more to him than all else in the world--will this change the conditions themselves?"

"Do you mean that you would not accept this change in him?"

"I mean that I would not take advantage of it," replied Helen, firmly. "I have seen the development which has taken place in Jack from the moment of our first meeting down to the present time. Even with the sorrow it has cost me I admire that development. Had I possessed equal possibilities, all would have been well. As I did not, it would be the act not of love but of tyranny to stand between him and his grander potentiality."

"But suppose that as Jack recovers he comes to a realization that his obsession has been a mistake--that your love and companionship really mean more to him than anything he can get elsewhere?"

"That would be a retrogression, after what I have seen him pass through. As I just said, if I possessed the ability to rise to him, what you suggest might be a possibility; but I would never consent to have him assume a lower plane than that upon which he belongs simply that I may retain my claim."

Helen rose as she spoke and walked slowly down the veranda. Uncle Peabody watched her retreating figure, and studied her face as she returned and leaned against one of the pillars in silence.

"Why do you think it would force him to take a lower plane?" he asked, pointedly.

Helen turned abruptly and looked at him with an expression of frank surprise. "Why do I think so?" she repeated. "What a foolish question!"

"Still, I ask you for an answer," Uncle Peabody insisted.

"Because he is so far ahead of me in every way," Helen answered, simply.

"Suppose this is not true?"

"But it is."

"Why are you so positive?"

"Because it is quite apparent to every one--to Jack, to Cerini, and even to myself."

Uncle Peabody rose and stood beside her, taking her face between his hands and looking kindly into her eyes.

"You are not so far behind him as you think," he said, firmly. "Whatever the distance between you may have been when you were first married, the trials I have seen you endure have wrought changes at least as great as those you have noticed in Jack. You are a brave, strong woman, Helen, and your development has been from within outward. I wish I could say as much for him."

"You are trying to give me courage, you dear old comforter," Helen replied, unconvinced but with a grateful smile.

"I am trying to show you yourself as you really are, my child," Uncle Peabody replied, "and to help you to recognize an act of Providence when one falls your way."

XXIV

Dr. Montgomery's approximate estimate of the duration of Armstrong's delirium proved to be only a few days shorter than the actual fact. In less than a week all anxiety regarding any possible complications was set at rest by the doctor's report that his patient was progressing normally and as well as could be expected. The skull had sustained no injury, and the brain suffered only from the concussion. The household became accustomed to the still figure, which gave evidence of its returning strength only by the increasing frequency of incoherent ramblings, the voice developing in firmness as the days progressed.

Inez was about again by this time, and with sunken eyes and ashen face shared with Helen the privilege of watching beside the patient during the last week of his unconsciousness. But it was a different Inez from the serious but happy and alert girl who had sat beside Armstrong in the automobile when it had crashed against the wall. The burden of bearing her secret alone, during all these weeks, had been in itself a wearing experience, but this was as nothing compared with the agony of soul through which she had since passed. The very struggle with herself, and the sense of personal sacrifice she experienced, had previously served in her own mind to sanctify her affection and to justify its existence. Now that she had allowed her passion to burst from her control, all justification was at an end. Her womanhood and sense of right seemed to separate themselves from her weaker emotions, and to judge and condemn them without mitigation.

It was natural that Helen should attribute her changed condition to the horror of the accident itself; yet Inez knew that the scene which was enacted in her mind over and over again until it almost drove her mad was that of her own shameless disloyalty. She shuddered as it returned to her even now while sitting beside Armstrong's bed; she shrank from Helen's sympathetic caress and her thoughtful solicitude. If she could only cry out and proclaim to them all the unworthy part she had performed, she would feel some sense of relief in the self-abasement it must bring to her.

Armstrong's delirious wanderings were a sore trial to Inez, but she accepted and bore them with the unflinching courage of an ascetic. The sound of his voice, the undirected, expressionless gaze of his eyes, the uncertainty of what each disconnected sentence might call to mind--all drove fresh barbs into a soul already tortured by self-condemnation. At first his mind had seemed to center itself upon his wife and his enforced separation from her.

"When it is finished," he had murmured, tossing from side to side and finally raising his hand as if reaching out to some one--"when it is finished she will understand."

"She does understand, dear," Helen had cried out, seizing his hand and pressing it to her lips; but instantly he withdrew it, and his words again became incoherent and meaningless.

At another time, when both Helen and Inez were sitting near by, his eyes opened, and he seemed to be looking directly at his wife.

"She refuses to continue the work, Helen," he said, as she sprang to his side, believing that at last his mind had cleared--"you were quite wrong, do you not see?"

Helen looked at Inez quickly, noting the swift color which suffused her pale face, but before a word could be spoken the invalid had relapsed into his former condition. Inez made an excuse to escape from the room for a moment. "You were quite wrong--do you not see?" she repeated Armstrong's words to herself. Was he simply rambling, or had the subject been brought up for previous discussion? Inez' conscience, sensitive from the load already resting upon it, quivered with new apprehensiveness. Yet Helen's attitude toward her had in no way changed--in fact, the awful anxiety of the first suspense, together with the later mutual responsibilities which they had shared, had seemed to Inez to draw them even more closely to each other. She tried to gain an answer to her inward questionings from Helen's face as she re-entered the room, but found there nothing but cordiality and friendliness.

"He must be getting nearer and nearer to a return of consciousness," Helen had said, quite naturally; "but how he wanders!" She looked over affectionately to her husband, still and helpless, but breathing with the steady regularity of convalescence. "Sometimes it is about his work at the library--sometimes it is about me. What agony of spirit he must be passing through if he realizes any of it!"

"He loves you, Helen," Inez cried, impulsively--"he loves you now, just as he always has!"

"Of course." Helen looked up questioningly from her fancy work. She was not yet ready to take Inez into her confidence. "What a strange remark, dear! Is it not quite natural that my husband should love me?"

Helen's smiling face, as she asked her simple but disconcerting question, completely unnerved Inez.

"He has been so worried about the time which his work compelled him to be away from you," Inez replied, at length, trying to conceal her confusion. "He finished the first draft of the book the day of the accident. His first thought, after he put down his pen, was to return to the villa, that he might surprise you at lunch."

"Cerini!" called Armstrong.

Helen placed her hand upon his forehead soothingly.

"I owe it to my wife--" the invalid continued; "but I shall come back--come back."

"Yes, dear, you shall go back," she answered, quietly, resting her cheek against his--"you shall go back."

"When it is finished--" Armstrong murmured, again subsiding into silence.

So the days passed, one by one, differing little, each from the other, yet filled with many and conflicting emotions on the part of the faithful watcher by the bedside. With all its pain, Helen welcomed this period during which she could work out her problem with the unconscious help of the rambling, disconnected sentences which escaped from her husband's lips. Sometimes they were full of tenderness for her; again they were reproaches, levelled at himself for his neglect; but most frequently they made reference to his work in some of its various stages. Alternately her heart was touched by his apparent affection for her, and the wound again torn open by his appeal to or dependence upon Inez. But through it all came the one conviction, which needed but this strengthening reassurance to make her determined path seem certain--that whatever drew him away from his work and back to her was a sense of duty, and that alone.

Helen questioned Dr. Montgomery upon the ordinary phenomena in cases such as this.

"His mutterings may be absolutely meaningless," he replied to her questions, "or they may be thoughts or actual repetitions of conversations which he has previously had."

"In the latter case, would he be likely to repeat them correctly?"

"Yes, provided he repeats them at all."

"And these thoughts or conversations, if correctly repeated, would presumably indicate his convictions at the time they occurred?"

"His convictions at the time they occurred," Dr. Montgomery assented; "but their reliability as normal expressions would depend upon his mental condition at the time the thoughts occurred or the words were spoken."

Armstrong's recovery came unexpectedly, even after the long days of waiting. The perfect July day was drawing to a close, and Helen had watched the sinking sun from the window beside his bed. It was all so beautiful! The world seemed full of glorious hopefulness and promise, and her heart filled to overflowing at the thought that for her, who loved it so, that promise no longer held good. She turned to the silent figure lying upon the bed. Would he ever realize what she had gone through and must still endure for him? She sank upon her knees, burying her face in the counterpane, as if to shut out the overpowering grandeur, which produced so sad a contrast. Suddenly she felt a hand resting upon her head, and a voice spoke her name.

She looked up quickly straight into her husband's eyes, now wide open and filled with an expression so full of love and devotion that her heart sprang forth in eager response. It was the expression which his face had worn when she had first confessed her love for him, and the intervening months, with their brief joy and their long sorrow, were obliterated on the instant. Once more he was the devoted, thoughtful, irresistible lover, and Helen felt the weight of years roll off her tired shoulders, leaving her the happy, buoyant girl, proud of having won this strong man's affection. She gazed at him silently, fearing lest the eyes close again, and unwilling to lose a moment of their present significance; but they remained open.

"Helen," Armstrong repeated, still looking intently at her, "be patient, dear. I know how shamefully I have neglected you, I know how much I have hurt you; but my work is nearly finished now. Then, believe me, all will be as before."

The voice was calm and sustained. There was no hesitation, no rambling. Still, she did not fully comprehend that he was himself again.

"Yes, dear," she replied, humoring him; "then all will be as before."

He could not see the sharp pain which showed in her face as she spoke, nor did he realize how her heart wished that it might be so.

"I must get up," he continued, after a moment's silence. "What time is it? I shall be late at the library."

"You have finished your work for to-day, Jack," she answered, quietly.

"Have I?" he asked, simply.

His glance slowly wandered about the room. "Is it not morning?" he queried, at length.

"It is afternoon," she replied, turning toward the window. "See--the sun is just sinking behind San Miniato."

"Afternoon?" he queried, vaguely--"afternoon, and I still in bed?"

"You have not been well," she volunteered, guardedly, carefully following the doctor's injunctions. "Don't bother now; you will be feeling much better in the morning."

"Not well?" Armstrong's mind was groping around for some familiar landmark upon which to fasten. "I was at the library--was it this morning?--Cerini was there, Miss Thayer was there--where is Miss Thayer?"

"She went out only a moment ago. But don't try to think about it now. It will be much better for you to do that later."

He weakly acquiesced and closed his eyes, still holding her hand firmly grasped in his own. The doctor found him gently sleeping, with Helen watching patiently beside him, when he entered the room an hour later.

She held up her disengaged hand warningly. "He is himself again," she whispered.

"Good!" replied Dr. Montgomery, with satisfaction. "Tell me about it."

"That is splendid," he said, when she had recounted the details; "he is progressing famously. You won't be able to keep him from questioning, but try to let the awakening come as gradually as possible."

The morning brought renewed strength to the invalid. The nurse called Helen as soon as Armstrong wakened, and he plied her with countless interrogations. Uncle Peabody came in to see him immediately after a light breakfast had been served, but Inez, upon one pretext or another, delayed entering the sick-room.

"It will be better for him to become accustomed to his new conditions," she urged, when Helen suggested her going to see him. "You and Mr. Cartwright should have these first moments with him. Later I shall be only too glad to help in any way I can."

But Armstrong himself was not to be denied.

"There is more to all this than you are telling me," he said, petulantly, at last, after learning from Helen and Uncle Peabody such details as he could draw forth regarding the duration of his illness and its general nature. "I remember now leaving the library in the motor-car with Miss Thayer. We went--where did we go? Oh yes; to San Domenico. Then we came home. Did we come home?" he asked, with uncertainty in his voice; but before an answer could be given he had himself supplied the connecting link.

"I have it!" he cried, raising himself upon his elbow--"there was an accident. Alfonse tried to take that turn at the foot of the hill, and we smashed against the wall."

"Yes," Helen assented, trying to calm his rising excitement, "there was an accident, and you were badly hurt; but you are nearly well now. Please go slowly, Jack, or you will undo all that your long rest has accomplished. There is plenty of time."

"But Miss Thayer," he replied, not heeding her admonition and glancing about searchingly. "Where is Miss Thayer? She was injured, too?"

"Not seriously," Helen reassured him.

"Then where is she?"

"I don't know exactly, but she is not far away."

"You have not sent her away while I have been ill?" he asked, with a touch of his former suspicion.

"No, Jack." All of the tired, strained tone came back in Helen's voice as she turned away from the bed to conceal her disappointment.

Armstrong sensed it all as he had failed to do at other times since the gap had begun to widen.

"I did not mean that, Helen," he said, and reaching over he took her hand and drew her to him; "I really did not mean it."

"It is all right, Jack," Helen replied, withdrawing her hand and trying to smile; "I will find Inez and send her to you." And before he could remonstrate she had left the room.

While he waited Armstrong had a brief moment of introspection. Again he had wounded her, and for no cause. He had enjoyed the short period since his awakening, particularly on account of the tender and affectionate care Helen had given him, which she had for a long time withheld because of his own self-centred interest. It was with real regret that he found this little visit with his wife so abruptly brought to an end, yet he himself had forced the termination. He must fight against this unfortunate attribute, he told himself, and show Helen his real feelings toward her.

His reveries were interrupted by Inez' entrance. Silently she stood beside him, holding out her hand, which he quietly grasped for a moment and then released. He wondered at the color in her face and at her apparent unwillingness to meet his glance.

"They tell me we have been through an accident together," he said, slowly. "Thank God it was I who was injured and not you."

Inez turned from him, closing her eyes involuntarily. "Don't speak of it!" she cried, impulsively; "it was too awful!"

"But it is all over now."

"All but the memory," she replied, faintly. "Let us forget it, I beg of you."

"I was going to ask you for some of the details," Armstrong continued, "which you alone can give."

"Oh, I beg of you," she repeated; "I could not bear it."

"Then by all means let us forget it," he replied, curiously affected by the girl's emotion. "Perhaps some time later you will feel more like talking about it. You see, I can remember nothing after the crash against the wall."

"Thank God!" cried Inez, passionately, turning away her head.

"I suppose it is better so," Armstrong assented, still wondering at the intensity of her emotion. "But when one has had a whole fortnight of his life blotted out, he naturally feels a bit of curiosity concerning what happened during all that time."

"You must excuse me, Mr. Armstrong. You don't know how this tortures me, and I really cannot bear it."

Armstrong watched the girl as she turned and fairly fled from the room, completely mystified by her extraordinary attitude.

"What in the world can have happened?" he asked himself; and then he settled back on the pillow and tried to answer his own question.

XXV

There is no place like the sick-room for self-examination and introspection. In the still monotony of the slow-passing days, the invalid's mind is freed from the conventions of every-day complexities, and can view its problems with a veracity and a clearness at other times impossible. As Armstrong's convalescence continued, he marshalled before him certain events which had occurred since his arrival in Florence, and examined them with great minuteness. Some of these seemed trivial, and he wondered why they came back at this time and forced themselves upon him with such persistence; some of them were important, and he realized that Helen had much of which she might justly complain.

His eyes followed her as she moved about the room, quick to anticipate each wish or necessity, and sweetly eager to respond; yet he distinctly felt the barrier between them. He was conscious now that this barrier had existed for some time, and he found it difficult to explain to himself why he had only recently become aware of it. Helen's conversations with him came back with renewed force and vital meaning. He had resented it when she had told him that his work at the library had made him indifferent to everything else, yet she had been quite right in what she said. He had wilfully misunderstood her efforts to bring him back to himself, and had openly blamed her for faults which existed only in his own neglect. He had accused her of being jealous of his intimacy with Miss Thayer, yet her attitude toward Inez was a constant refutation. He had treated her even with incivility and unpardonable irritability.

The fault was his, he admitted, yet were there not extenuating circumstances? No one could have foreseen how completely engrossed he was to become in his work, or the extent of the mastery which the spell of this old-time learning was to gain over him. Naturally, he would have avoided it had he foreseen it; but once under its influence he had been carried forward irresistibly, unable to withdraw, unwilling to oppose. And yet he had boasted of his strength!

"You have become infinitely bigger and stronger and grander," Helen had said to him, even when her heart was breaking, "and I admire you just so much the more."

Armstrong winced as these words came home to him. With so much real cause for complaint and upbraiding, Helen had gently tried to show him his shortcomings, tempering her comment with expressions full of loyalty and affection.

But on one point she had been wholly wrong. It was natural that she should have misinterpreted the intimacy which a community of interests had brought about between Miss Thayer and himself. Inez was, of course, much stronger intellectually than Helen, and by reason of this was far better fitted to assist him in his own intellectual expressions. But their intimacy had never extended beyond this even in thought or suggestion. Helen had insisted that Inez was in love with him, and he had tried to show her the absurdity of her suspicion. Here, at least, he had been in the right. Throughout their close association, and even after Helen had spoken, he had never discovered the slightest evidence that any such affection existed. The still unexplained remarks of the contessa's might or might not be significant. Emory, of course, was prejudiced, and his comments did not require serious consideration. Miss Thayer's refusal to continue the work, the comparative infrequency of her visits to his sick-chamber--in fact, everything went to show how far Helen had wandered from the actual facts.

Armstrong found some comfort in this conclusion. With Helen so unquestionably wrong in this hypothesis, it of course went without saying that she was equally wrong in what she had said later. She believed that he had a career before him. Cerini had said the same thing, Miss Thayer had said so--and Armstrong himself believed, in the consciousness of having completed an unusual piece of work, that such a possibility might exist. He felt no conceit, but rather that overpowering sense of hopefulness which comes to a man as a result of successful endeavor--not yet crowned, but completed to his own satisfaction. If this career was to be his, he could not follow Helen's assumption that it must separate them. That was, of course, as ridiculous as her feelings about Inez. Success for him must mean the same to her, his wife. When the right time came he would take up these two points specifically with her and show her the error which had misled her.

This self-examination covered several days. At first Armstrong found himself unable to think long at a time without becoming mentally wearied; but by degrees his mind gained in vigor, and proved fully equal to the demands made upon it. The details of what had happened on the day of the accident came back to him one by one up to the point of the accident itself, but he felt annoyed that he could not learn more of this. From Helen, Uncle Peabody, and the doctor he knew of the early belief that he had been killed and of the excitement caused by his revived respiration. Of his period of delirium, the nurse had given him more information than the others; but of the break between the moment when the car struck the wall, and the time when Helen arrived upon the scene, Miss Thayer alone held the key. Armstrong's curiosity regarding this interval was, perhaps, heightened by the evident aversion which she felt to discussing it. To mention the subject in her presence was certain to drive her from the room, her face blazing with color, her body trembling in every nerve.

The patient was able to move about a little by this time, and at the close of each day he found relief from the monotony of his room and the veranda by short walks in the garden, rich in its midsummer gorgeousness of color. A couch had been placed near the retaining wall, so that he could rest upon it whenever he felt fatigued. Between his solicitude concerning the situation with Helen, and his determination to discover from Miss Thayer the occasion of her remarkable attitude, his thoughts were fully occupied.

On this particular afternoon Armstrong had thrown himself upon the couch, and for a moment closed his eyes. With no warning he saw a scene enacted before his mental vision in which he himself was the central figure. He was lying still and lifeless upon the grass by the roadside at the foot of the hill. Four other figures were in the picture. He recognized Inez, but the other women and the boy he had never seen. The figures moved about, as in a kinetoscope. One of the women ran into the cottage and returned with a basin of water. Inez knelt beside him and bathed his forehead. He could see the tense expression on her face. She seemed to speak to the women, but he could distinguish no words. Then he saw himself lifted and carried into the cottage. At this point the picture disappeared as suddenly as it had come.

Armstrong opened his eyes when he found the picture gone, and sat up, gazing about him excitedly. He saw Inez crossing the veranda and called to her abruptly.

"Tell me," he cried, as she hastened to obey the summons and before she reached him, "who carried me into the cottage after the accident?"

The girl paled at the suddenness and intensity of the question. "There were four of us," she said, faintly--"two peasant women, a boy, and myself."

Armstrong passed his hand over his forehead and gazed at Inez intently. So far, then, his vision had been correct. Breathlessly he pursued his interrogations.

"Before that did one of the women bring some water from the cottage, and did you kneel beside me and bathe my face?"

"Yes. Who has told you?"

"Then it all happened just like that?"

"Like what?" Inez was trembling, vaguely apprehensive.

Armstrong rose. "Why, as you have just said," he replied. "You know I have been trying to get you to tell me about it."

"You are unkind," Inez retorted, quickly. "You know how much all mention of this pains me, yet you persist."

"Forgive me." Armstrong controlled himself and held out his hand kindly. "I don't mean to hurt you, believe me, but my mind is ever searching out that connecting link. You won't tell me about it, so I suppose I shall never find it."

She started to reply, but as quickly checked herself. "There is nothing for me to tell," she said, at length, without looking up. "I will send Helen to you," she added, as she hastened away.

Armstrong again threw himself upon the couch, and, trying to assume the same position, closed his eyes in a vain endeavor to summon back the vision he had seen. If it had only continued a little longer he might have learned all! The fugitive nature of his quest proved a fascination, and day after day he exerted every effort to gratify his whim.

Inez clearly avoided him. Whether or not this was apparent to the other members of the family he could not tell, but it was quite obvious to him. There must be some reason beyond what he knew, and he had almost stumbled upon it! Another week passed by, more rapidly than any since his convalescence began because of the determination with which he pursued his baffling problem.

Again he lay upon his couch in the garden, his eyes closed, but with his mind fixed upon its one desire. Suddenly he felt the presence of some one. A thrill of expectation passed through him, but he dared not open his eyes lest the impression should disappear. For what seemed a long time he was conscious of this person standing beside him, and he knew that whoever it might be was gazing at him intently. Then he felt a hand gently take his arm, which was hanging over the side of the couch, and, raising it carefully, place it in a more comfortable position. Then the hand rested for a moment on his forehead.

Opening his eyes a little, as if by intuition, he saw Miss Thayer tiptoeing along the path toward the house. He closed his eyes again, and as he did so he felt a sudden return of the subconscious impression.

Now, in his mind's eye he saw a cheaply furnished room, and Miss Thayer leaning, with ashen face and dishevelled hair, against a closed door. He saw her sink upon the floor and pass through a paroxysm of grief. She murmured some incoherent words, and then stood erect, looking straight at him as he lay upon the bed. Then she lifted his arm, just as she had a moment before, and covered his hand with kisses, sobbing the while with no attempt at control.

"Speak to me!" he seemed to hear her say. "Tell me that you are not dead!" He could feel the intensity of her gaze even as he lay there. "Jack, my beloved; you are mine, dear--do you hear?--and I am yours." Beads of perspiration gathered on his forehead. "How I have loved you all these weeks!... Now I can tell you of it, dear--it will do no harm!"

Held by a force he could not have broken had he wished, Armstrong watched the progress of the tragedy.

"My darling, my beloved!" he heard Inez whisper; "open your eyes just once, and tell me that I may call you mine if only for this one terrible moment.... This is our moment, dear--no one can take it from us!... Have you not seen how I have loved you, how I have struggled to keep you from knowing it?... Jack! Jack! this is the beginning and the end!"

He could endure the scene no longer. With a look of horror on his face, he sprang to his feet and glanced about him. He was alone in the garden. He stumbled rather than walked to the retaining wall, and rested against it for support.

"Great God!" he cried, aloud, "have I regained my mind only to lose it again?"

He glanced toward the house. There was no one in sight, but Helen was playing Debussy's "Claire de Lune" upon the piano in the hall, and the sound of the music soothed him.

"Dreams--hallucinations," he repeated to himself. "God! what an experience!"

XXVI

With Armstrong's convalescence progressing so satisfactorily, Helen returned to her music with a clear conscience. She was determined that the influence upon him of her personal presence should be reduced as nearly as possible to a minimum. Naturally, during the period of his illness and the attendant weakness, she had been with him almost constantly; naturally he had turned to her with what seemed to be his former affection. But the die was cast, and the accident which for the time being interrupted the progress of events predestined to occur could in no way prevent their final accomplishment. Helen thought often of Uncle Peabody's optimistic suggestion that the present condition was bound to straighten matters out, but she refused to be buoyed up by false hopes, only to suffer a harder blow when once again Armstrong became what she believed to be himself. She saw no gain in tuning up the heart-strings to their former pitch, when neither she nor Jack could again play upon them with any degree of harmony.

Helen was with her husband for whatever portion of the day he needed her, whether it was to read aloud to him, or to converse, or to wander about the garden. She served each meal to him with her own hands, and watched the progress of his improvement so carefully that nothing remained undone. Yet, with deliberate intention, she was with him no more than this. Whenever she found him interested in something or with some one who engaged his attention for the time being, she slipped away so quietly that he scarcely noticed it and devoted herself to her own interests, which she was desperately trying to make fill the void in her life. Her music was her greatest solace, for in it she found a response to her every mood. In the dim-lit hall of the villa she sat for hours at the piano, her fingers running over the keys, her mind pondering upon her complex problem--each action apparently separated from the other, yet in exact accord. Sometimes it was a nocturne of Chopin's, sometimes an impromptu of Schubert's; but always she found in the unspoken, poetic expression of the composer's soul an answering sympathy which was lacking in other forms more tangible.

Inez interrupted one of these communions, when Helen supposed herself alone with Debussy. Lately she had found herself turning to the charm and mystery of his atmosphere, the strangeness of his idiom, the vagueness of his rhythms, and the fugitive grace and fancy of his harmonic expression with an understanding and a surrender which she had never before felt. The music reflected upon her its delicate perception of nature in all its moods--the splash of the waves upon the shore, the roaring of the surf, the gloom of the forests relieved by the moonlight on the trees.

"Don't, Helen--I beg of you!" Inez exclaimed, suddenly. "Say it to me, but don't torture me with those weird reproaches. Every note almost drives me wild!"

"Why, Inez, dear!" cried Helen, startled by the girl's words no less than by the suddenness of the interruption. "What in the world do you mean? You should have told me before if my playing affected you so."

"I love it, Helen," she replied; "but lately it has hurt me through and through. I can hear your voice echoing in every note you strike, and I feel its bitter reproach."

Helen tried to draw Inez beside her, but the girl sank upon the floor, resting her elbows on Helen's knees and looking up into her face with tense earnestness.

"You have been terribly unstrung these days, dear," Helen replied, "and you are unstrung now or you would not discover what does not exist. It is your instinctive sympathy for poor Melisande that makes you feel so--you see her, as I do, floating resistlessly over the terraces and fountains, the plaything of Fate, a phantom of love and longing and uncertainty. That is what you feel, dear."

Helen took Inez' face between her hands and looked into her eyes for a moment. "People call it mystical and unreal," she continued, "but I believe that some of us have it in our own lives, don't you?"

Inez did not reply directly, and struggled to escape the searching gaze.

"Helen," she said, abruptly, "I simply cannot stay on here; I shall go mad if I do. Each time I suggest going you say that you need me, and it seems ungrateful, after all you have done for me, to speak as I do. But you cannot understand. I am not myself, and I am getting into a condition which will make me a burden to you instead of a help."

"I do need you, dear," Helen replied, quietly, "but certainly not at the expense either of your health or your happiness. The effects of the accident have lasted much longer than I thought they would. I wanted you to be quite recovered before you left us."

"If the accident were all!" moaned Inez, burying her face in Helen's lap.

Helen made no response, but laid her hand kindly upon Inez' head. After a few moments the girl straightened up. Her eyes burned with the intensity of her sudden resolve, and she spoke rapidly, as if fearful that her courage would prove insufficient for the task she had set for herself to do.

"Helen!" she cried, "I am going to tell you something which will make you hate me. You will want me to leave you, and our friendship will be forever ended."

"Wait, dear," urged Helen--"wait until you are calmer; then, if you choose, tell me all that you have in your heart."

"No; I must tell you now. I love Jack, Helen--do you understand? I love your husband, and, fight it as I do, I cannot help it. Think of having to make a confession like that!"

Helen's face lighted up with glad relief.

"I am so glad that you have told me this," she said, quietly.

Inez gazed at Helen in wonder, amazed by her calmness and her unexpected words.

"But I must tell you more," she continued, wildly; "I have loved him for weeks--almost since I first came here!"

"I know you have, Inez." Helen pressed a kiss upon the girl's forehead. "I have known it for a long time; but I have also seen your struggle against it, and your loyalty to me--and to him."

"You have known it?" Inez asked, faintly. Then her voice strengthened again. "But you have not known all! I did fight against it, as you say, and I was loyal until"--her voice broke for a moment--"until that day of the accident--in the cottage--I thought him dead--"

"Yes," encouraged Helen, eagerly.

"Until then I was loyal, but when I was alone with him, and thought him dead, I--oh, Helen, you will hate me as I hate myself--then I kissed him, and I told him of my love, and I--"

"Yes, I know, dear," Helen interrupted, her voice full of tenderness. "No one can blame you for what you did under such awful circumstances. I suspected what had happened when I found you where you had fainted across his body. But you can't imagine how glad I am that you have told me all this. I felt sure you would, some day."

"You will let me go now, won't you? You can see how impossible it is for me to stay."

"I need you now more than ever," replied Helen, firmly. "If you insist on leaving I shall not urge you to stay, but even you--knowing what you do--cannot know how much I need you."

"How did you know?" Inez asked, weakly.

"From what Ferdy said first, then from what I saw myself."

"Why did you not send me away, then?"

"I had no right to do so, Inez."

"Of course you were perfectly sure of Jack."

Helen winced. "Yes," she replied, quietly; "I was sure of Jack."

"But you understand now that I really cannot stay?"

"Jack needs you still."

"No; his manuscript is complete. He will not need me for the revision."

"You would stay if he did?"

"Why, yes."

"Then if you would stay if he needed you, surely you will do the same for me?"

"Oh, Helen!"

"Will you? When Jack is quite himself again I will urge no longer. Now that you have told me this, it will be easier for you. Will you not do this for me?"

"There is nothing I would not do for you, Helen!" cried Inez, throwing her arms impulsively around her friend's neck and kissing her passionately. "You are so strong you make me more ashamed than ever of my own weakness."

"Thank you, dear," Helen replied, simply, returning her embrace; "but don't make any mistake about my strength. It is because I lack it so sadly that I ask you to stay."

* * * * *

Dr. Montgomery found Armstrong's temperature considerably higher when he called later in the day, after the disquieting mental experience his patient had passed through. Armstrong also appeared to be preoccupied, and more interested in asking questions than in answering them. For the first time he seemed to be curious in regard to the nature of his illness.

"In a case like mine, is it possible for the mental convalescence to be retarded or to go backward?" he asked.

"Yes," Dr. Montgomery replied, "it is possible, but hardly probable, especially with a patient who has progressed so normally as you have."

"It is normal for the memory to have a complete lapse, as in my case?"

"Absolutely so."

"Is it possible for a knowledge of the events which occurred during such a lapse to be restored--say, weeks afterward?"

"Yes; under certain conditions."

"And those conditions are?" asked Armstrong, eagerly.

The doctor settled back in his chair.

"Let me see if I can make it clear to you: all memories are permanent--that is to say, every event makes a distinct, even though it may be an unconscious, impression upon the brain. Sometimes these memories remain dormant for months, or even years, before something occurs to bring them to mind; but even before this the memories are there, just the same."

"But you are speaking of every-day occurrences, are you not? My question is whether or not it might be possible for me, for example, to have a reviving knowledge of certain events which took place during a period of apparent unconsciousness."

"I understand. Yes, it would be quite possible for this to happen."

"What would be necessary to bring it about?"

Dr. Montgomery smiled at his patient's earnestness.

"Are you so eager to recall that period? But the question is a fair one. Some incident must take place similar to something which occurred during the unconscious period in order to revive the dormant memory. I doubt if you could do it deliberately."

"I have no intention of trying," Armstrong replied; "but I am interested in this particular phase of the case. Suppose, during the apparently unconscious period, some one had lifted my arm or placed a hand upon my forehead--would the same act be enough to restore the dormant memory, as you call it?"

"Quite enough--though it would not necessarily do so. I have known several cases where the repetition of such an act has produced just the result which you describe."

"And these revived impressions are apt to be trustworthy?"

"As a photographic plate," replied the doctor, emphatically.

Armstrong was silent for some moments.

"It is an interesting phase, as you say," he remarked, at length. "I think I may try the experiment, after all."

"The chances will be against you; but I imagine you have been pretty well informed of what has happened. Don't try to think too hard. It will be all the better for you to give your brain a little rest; it has had a hard shaking-up."

So this was the solution of the mystery for which he had sought so long! Armstrong found himself in a curious position after the doctor took his departure, leaving behind him a new knowledge of affairs which, six hours before, his patient would have considered absolutely preposterous. Helen was right, and had been right from the beginning. His one consolation was removed, and in its place was a complication which seemed past straightening out. To the blame which Armstrong had already taken to himself on Helen's account, he must now add the responsibility of having inspired this sentiment in Inez' heart, which meant unhappiness to all. Even though this had been done unconsciously, he told himself, it was no less culpable in that he had not himself discovered the situation and checked it before any serious harm had been done. Helen had seen it, the contessa had seen it, and he wondered how many others. He had been blind in this, criminally blind, and now he must pay the penalty.

But this penalty could not be borne by him alone--he could see that clearly. Helen and Inez were both hopelessly involved. And what a woman his wife had shown herself to be! Knowing of this affection on the part of Inez, she had suffered them to continue together in order that his work might not be disturbed. She had told him just how matters stood--not with recriminations, but with loving solicitude, offering to sacrifice herself, if necessary, to secure his happiness, drinking her cup of sorrow to the dregs, and alone! It was plain enough to him now. He thought of Helen as she was when they first came to Florence, and compared her with the Helen of to-day. He had brought about that change; he alone was responsible for it. She had craved the present, with its sunshine, its birds, its happiness, and instead of all this he had filled it for her with nothing but sorrow and suffering! He merited the scoring Emory gave him, even though the denunciation had gone too far.

As the bandage fell from his eyes, the character which he had assumed during these past months stood out clearly before him, shorn of its academic halo, and pitiful in its unfulfilled ideals. He had sought to join that company of humanists who had awakened the world to the joy and beauty of intellectual attainment. He had believed himself worthy of this honor, in that he believed he had understood and sympathized with their underlying motives. So he had in principle, but how wofully he had failed in his efforts to carry them out! Instead of assimilating the happy youthfulness of the Greek, together with the Grecian harmony of existence, he had developed his morbid self-centering and self-consciousness. His blind, unreasoning devotion to his single interest had resulted in folly and fanaticism. He had overlooked the cardinal element in the humanistic creed that knowledge without love meant death and isolation. Instead of singling out and joining together the beauties for which humanism stood, he had embraced and emphasized its limitations.

"I am an impostor!" Armstrong exclaimed, no longer able to endure his mental lashing in silence--"an arrant impostor! I have set myself up as a modern apostle, I have written platitudes upon intellectual supremacy and the religion of knowledge, when the one single personal attribute to which I can justly lay claim is insufferable academic arrogance. I have seized a half-truth and fortified it with fact; and in accomplishing this stupendous piece of fatuous nonsense I have stultified myself and destroyed the happiness of all!"

XXVII

Armstrong's first act, on the following day, was to send to the library for his manuscript. Helen looked upon this as an evidence that with his returning strength had also come a return of his all-controlling passion. This was a natural explanation of the peculiar change which she had noticed in him during the past few days, and his request fitted in so perfectly with a conversation between Uncle Peabody and herself the evening before that she almost unconsciously exchanged with him a glance of mutual understanding.

But the real motive was quite at variance with her interpretation. Armstrong had passed through his period of introspection without taking any one into his confidence. Fierce as the struggle had been, he felt instinctively that his only chance of restoring conditions to anything which even approached equilibrium was to make no new false step. He had come to certain definite conclusions, but was still undecided as to the proper methods to be adopted in his attempt to turn these conclusions into realities.

First of all, he had placed himself in an entirely false position with Helen. He had given her cause to believe him indifferent and neglectful. This, at least, he argued, could be remedied, even though it was now too late to spare her the suffering through which she had passed. But he could explain it all, and by his future devotion to her, and to those interests of which she was a part, he could make her forget the past.

With Miss Thayer the proposition was a different one. To her he had done an injury which could not be repaired. He had sought to take her with him into a world full of those possibilities which the intellectual alone can comprehend. Instead of leaving her there, inspired by the wisdom of such an intercourse, he had--unconsciously but still culpably--developed in her an interest in himself. The problem was to extricate her and himself from this compromising situation without destroying all future self-respect for them both; and the solution of it seemed far beyond his reach.

And besides all this, there was the manuscript. Despite his best endeavor, he could not recall even an outline of what he had written. After a full realization came to him of the extent to which he had misunderstood and misconstrued the basic principles of humanism itself, his interest in his work became one of curiosity to learn by actual examination how far he had accepted the half-truths, and how far he had wandered from the path which he had thought he knew so well. The whole volume must be filled with absurd theories, falsely conceived and as falsely expressed. He must go over it, page by page, and learn from it the bitter fact of his unworthiness to stand as the modern expounder of those great minds whose influence alone should have been enough to hold him to his appointed course.

When the manuscript arrived he devoted himself to it with an eagerness which added to the natural misunderstanding of his motive. With no word of comment, he took the package to his room, where, after bolting the door, he opened it and applied himself to his task. Hours passed by, but he refused to be interrupted. Helen tried to persuade him to come down-stairs for luncheon, but he begged to be excused. Uncle Peabody calmed her anxiety; so the day passed, leaving him alone with his burdens.

Armstrong approached his manuscript with bitterness of spirit. This was the tangible form of that inexplicable force which had drawn him away from those ties which stood to him for all future peace and serenity; this had been the medium which had fostered the new affection so fraught with sorrow and even danger; this was the proof of his absolute lack of harmony with those noble principles which he still felt, when rightly expressed, represented the highest possibilities of life itself. At first he hesitated to read it, dreading what it must disclose. Then he attacked it fiercely, passing from page to page with feverish intensity.

As he read, his bitterness and dread disappeared, and in their place came first surprise and then amazement. Was this his manuscript? Had he written these pages in which the real, wholesome, glorious spirit of past attainment and present possibilities fairly lived and breathed! His amazement turned into absolute mystification. He read of the important movement which liberated the rich humanities of Greece and Rome from the proscription of the Church; he saw literature itself expand in subject and in quantity; he himself felt the sundering of the bonds of ignorance, superstition, and tradition which had previously confined intellectual life on all sides.

Surely this was a simple yet sane presentation of the subject, Armstrong said to himself, as it had formulated itself in words after his long study. His error must lie in his application of it to the people. The manuscript unfolded rapidly under his eager inspection. It told him of the great step forward when writing changed to printing. He followed the convincing argument that this new art from its earliest beginnings was to be identical with that of culture, and a faithful index to the standards of the ages to come. It told him that the advent of the printing-press made men think, and gave them the opportunity of studying description and argument where previously they had merely gazed at pictorial design. He could see the development of the people under this new influence, growing strong in self-reliance, and confident in their increasing power.

He found himself unable to condemn his work thus far. In application, as in definition, what he had written seemed to ring true. Later on he must find expressions of those distorted ideals in the manuscript, just as he had found them in himself. With increasing interest he read of the benefits these people of the _quattrocento_ reaped from the principles of Grecian civilization, now tempered by the inevitable filtering through the great minds of a century. With no uncertain note the manuscript portrayed the efforts made by this people to reach the unattainable, refusing to be bound down by limited ideals, and creating masterpieces in every art which expressed in the highest form the ethical spirit of the period.

The pages still turned rapidly. At times Armstrong became so absorbed that he forgot himself and the fact that he was analyzing the outpouring of his own soul. Then he recalled the present and the problem before him. He could not comprehend that this work was his own; he did not remember writing it; he was ignorant of the particular study or reasoning which had brought it forth. But there the words stood, in his own handwriting, a visible evidence of something which had actually taken place.

As the reading progressed, he became more and more bewildered. It was direct and convincing. The subject was handled with restraint, and yet he felt the force behind each sentence. Suddenly his eye fell upon this paragraph:

"After giving due credit to humanism for its vast contribution to the arts and to literature, there yet remains to acknowledge the greatest debt of all: it taught man to hold himself open to truth from every side, and so to assimilate it that it became a part of his very life itself. Thus making himself inclusive of all about him, his attitude toward his fellow-man could not be other than sympathetic and appreciative."

Armstrong read this over a second time, and, bending forward, he rested his head upon his hands in the midst of the sheets of manuscript and groaned aloud. This was his acknowledgment of the great lesson of humanism, and yet he had not applied it to his own every-day life! "It taught man to hold himself open to truth from every side," he repeated to himself. "Thus making himself inclusive of all about him, his attitude toward his fellow-man could not be other than sympathetic and appreciative."

At length he raised his head, and, rising wearily, he walked to the window, drawing in the refreshing air. The strain had been intense, and he found himself utterly exhausted.

"I see it all," he said, bitterly; "the fault is not with the book or with the principles themselves--it is with me! I have written better than I knew; I have preached where I have not practised. Oh, Helen--oh, Inez! Can I ever undo the wrong I have done you both!"

XXVIII

It was several days before Armstrong found himself ready to take up the unravelling of the thread. The shuttle had moved to and fro so silently, and its web was woven with so intricate a pattern, that he felt the hopelessness even of finding an end of the yarn, where he might begin his work. He watched the two girls in their every-day life as they moved about him; he studied them carefully, he compared their personal characteristics. Both were greatly changed. Miss Thayer continued ill at ease and unlike her former self in her relations to Helen and Uncle Peabody as well as toward himself. He felt that now he understood the reason; and beyond this it was natural that she should miss the absorbing interest which the work had given her, coming, as it did, to so abrupt an end and leaving nothing which could take its place.

But Helen had changed more. The girlish vivacity which had previously characterized her had disappeared, and in its place had come a quiet, reposeful dignity which, while it made her seem an older woman, would have appealed to him as wonderfully becoming save for the restraint which accompanied it. She held herself absolutely in hand. Her every action, while considerate in its relation to others, admitted of no denial. Armstrong felt instinctively rather than because of anything which had happened that were their wills to clash now hers would prove the stronger. There had been a development in her far beyond anything he had realized.

Comparing the two, as he had ample opportunity to do, he wondered if he had made a fair estimate of her strength in his previous considerations. Helen had considered herself unfitted to enter into his work with him. She had frankly stated her unwillingness to go back into the past, and to live among its memories, when the present offered an alternative which was to her so much more attractive. Inez seized with avidity the opportunity he offered, and had entered into his work with an enthusiasm second only to his own. Suppose Helen had done this, Armstrong asked himself. With her characteristics, as he was only now coming to understand them, she would not long have remained content to act as his agent--she would have become a definite part of the work herself, and would have helped to shape it, instead of yielding more and more to his own personality. Inez had helped him much, and his obligation to her was not overlooked; but he could see how this helpfulness had lessened, day by day, as her intellect had become subservient to his own. He had been glad of this at the time, but now he found himself asking whether Helen would not have shown greater strength under the same circumstances.

Since his accident the contrast had been greater. Helen had assumed definite control over everything. Inez, Uncle Peabody, Armstrong himself recognized in her, without expression, the acknowledged and undisputed head of affairs. It had all come about so naturally, and Helen herself seemed so unconscious of it, that he could not explain it. On the other hand, Inez had completely lost her nerve. The crisis through which the two girls had passed had produced upon them vastly differing effects, and Armstrong could not fail to be impressed by the result of his observations.

Finally he determined to talk the matter over with Helen, and here again he found himself counting upon her assistance in straightening things out with Inez. Had he realized it, this was the first time in his life that he had admitted even to himself that any one could aid him in any matter which he could not personally control. Dimly, it is true, but still definitely, he was conscious that he was making an unusual admission, yet he experienced a certain amount of gratification in doing so.

Helen had been reading aloud to him while he reclined upon his couch in a shady corner of the veranda. For some moments he had heard nothing of the spoken words, for his eyes, resting fixedly upon his wife's face, revealed to him a more impressive story than that contained within the printed volume. How beautiful she was! The clear-cut profile; the long lashes hiding from him the deep, responsive eyes, whose sympathy he well knew; the soft, sweet voice which fell upon his ear with soothing cadence; the whole harmonious bearing, indicative of a character well defined, yet unconscious of its strength--all combined to show him at a single glance how rare a woman she really was. As he watched her the definition which he himself had written came back to him with tremendous force. "It taught man to hold himself open to truth from every side. Thus making himself inclusive of all about him, his attitude toward his fellow-man could not be other than sympathetic and appreciative." What man or woman had he ever known who so truly lived up to this high standard as this girl who sat beside him, all unconscious of the tumult raging in his mind?

Then the storm passed from his brain to his heart. His affection, intensified by the struggles he had experienced, overpowered him, and he cried aloud in a voice which startled Helen by the suddenness of its appeal. Seizing her disengaged hand, he pressed it passionately to his lips.

"Don't read any more," he begged; "I must talk with you."

Startled almost to a degree of alarm, she laid down the book, regarding him intently.

"Can you ever forgive me for all I have made you suffer?" he continued, in the same tense voice; "can you ever believe that my forgetfulness of everything which was due you was not deliberate, but the result of some force beyond my control?"

Helen looked at him steadily for a moment before replying. "Yes," she said, at length, making a desperate effort to preserve her composure; "I forgive you gladly. Shall we go on with the story?"

"No!" he replied, almost fiercely, seizing the volume and placing it beyond her reach upon the couch. "I have been waiting for this moment too long, and now nothing shall take it from me."

Helen realized that it was also the moment for which she had been waiting, and which she had been dreading beyond expression. Now he would comprehend what she had meant, now he would struggle with her to prevent her from doing what she knew she must do.

"There is no need of explanation, Jack," she said, at length. "I understand everything, and have understood for a long time."

"Can you believe that I myself have only recently come to a realization?"

"Yes; it has come to you sooner than I had expected."

"Can you believe how sincerely pained I am that all this should have happened?"

"I have never for a moment thought that you would intentionally hurt me."

"Then you do understand, and will forget?"

Armstrong sat up on the edge of the couch and watched Helen's face intently.

"You don't know what you are asking," she replied, dropping her eyes.

"Yes, I do," he insisted. "I want to blot out the memory of every pang I have caused you by a devotion beyond anything you have ever dreamed."

"Don't, Jack," protested Helen.

"Why not? Don't you think I mean it? From now on I have no interest except you, dear; and I will make you forget everything which has happened."

Helen pressed his hand gratefully, and then withdrew her own.

"This is only going to open everything up again," she said, in a low, strained voice, "and that will be simply another great mistake."

"You don't believe me." Armstrong's voice was reproachful.

"I believe you feel all that you say now, Jack."

"But--"

"But you are not yourself now; that is all."

"I am quite myself; in fact, I am almost as good as new."

"I don't mean physically."

"And mentally as well. My mind is as clear as it ever was."

"I know, Jack; but you are far away from the influence which has so controlled you. That is what I mean."

"It is a mighty good thing that I am." Armstrong spoke with emphasis.

"For the time being, no doubt; but soon you will be able to return to it."

"I shall never return to it."

Helen looked up quickly. Armstrong's words were spoken so forcibly that they startled her.

"You must go back to it," she replied, with equal emphasis; "it is your life, and you must go back."

"I have passed through the experience once and for all time."

Helen found it difficult not to be affected by the convincing tone.

"I have made more mistakes than you know of."

"In your work, do you mean?"

"Yes."

"But this is only the first draft; you can easily correct them."

"They could be more easily corrected in the book than where they are."

"I don't understand."

"The mistakes are in me!" Armstrong cried. "I am no humanist; I am an impostor!"

"Jack! Jack!" Helen was really alarmed. "You are putting too much of a tax upon yourself. Remember, you are not well yet."

"I am worse than an impostor," Armstrong continued, excitedly, refusing to be checked: "I am a traitor to the very cause I set myself to further! I have been false in my duty to it, as I have been in my obligations to you."

"That is just the point," Helen interrupted. "I absolved you of your obligations to me weeks ago, so that part of it is all settled."

"But I did not absolve myself. I don't understand what I did or why I did it. Day by day I felt myself slipping further and further away from you. I was not strong enough to appreciate what was taking place, and was powerless to resist."

"But I understood it even then," Helen continued. "I recognized that our marriage was the first mistake, and decided that I would do my part toward remedying the error with as little pain as possible."

"Our marriage was no mistake, except my own unfitness to be your husband!" Armstrong cried, bitterly.

"Don't, Jack," Helen again pleaded. "You see, I have had a much longer time to think the matter out."

"I was all right until I came under the influence, which completely changed me, just as you told me it did, time and again. Then, instead of being developed by it as I should have been, I assimilated nothing but its limitations and began to go backward."

"You must have assimilated far more than that," Helen insisted, "for your personal development through it all has been tremendous. Otherwise this could not be."

"Listen, Helen." Armstrong was desperate. "Let me tell you how far down I have gone. You know how eager I was, when we first came, to accomplish some great achievement. You know how much I admired the works and personalities of those grand old characters of whom you have so often heard me speak. Well, I took up my work. I studied these characters, I wrote about them, I tried to assimilate their principles and to express them in words. At length the work was finished. Cerini praised it, and I felt that I had proved myself equal to the undertaking."

"And so you had," Helen interrupted. "Cerini told me so himself."

"Cerini knows nothing of how ignominiously I failed to apply these principles to myself. He has read the noble platitudes with which my book is filled; you have experienced the unworthy personal expressions as they have appeared in my every-day life."

"But you have said yourself that you could not help it."

"I should have been able to; that is where I showed my utter unfitness for the undertaking. Now do you understand?"

"Yes, Jack," Helen replied, slowly, after a moment's pause, "I think I do understand; but I also think that my understanding is clearer than yours."

"Does it not enable you to forgive me for it all?"

"Yes--I have already told you that. What you have said is exactly what I knew you must say when you had been long enough away from your work. I have never felt this influence of which you have so often spoken, but I have recognized its strength by what I have seen. I do not mean that you need necessarily continue in your present intensity, but I do mean that whether you recognize it or not this second nature is your real self."

"But I tell you that I have no further interest in my work."

"You think so, Jack, but you have been away from it for weeks. Perhaps by returning home you could smother your love of it for a long time, but it would be there just the same. And without it you could never express your own individuality."

"I would, at least, be the self you knew before we came here."

"Yes, but only that. With all the pain, Jack, I have not been blind to what it has done for you. With all the misapplication of the principles which you mention you have gained so much that you could never be the old self again. I could not respect you if you did. Surely it would not be following the teachings of these grand spirits were you to live a life below the standard which you have shown yourself capable of maintaining."

"Then let us live that life together, Helen," Armstrong begged; "let us begin all over again, taking my mistakes as guiding-posts to keep us from the dangers against which I have not been strong enough, alone, to guard myself."

"Oh, Jack!" Helen withdrew her hands and pressed them against her tired temples. "Don't you see that this is simply repeating the mistake which has caused all our trouble? Now, at this moment, we are to each other just what we were when we became engaged, forgetful of all that has occurred since. Why not recognize things as they really are, and spare ourselves the added sorrow which must surely come?"

"Can you not forgive what has happened since?"

"I have forgiven all that there is to forgive; but I can't forget the knowledge that has come to me."

"What knowledge is there which refuses to be forgotten?"

"A knowledge of your real self, Jack--and that self has never belonged to me. It is as distinct and separate as if it were that of another man. It has been developed apart from me; it is of such a nature that I cannot become a part of it."

"You are so great a part of it already, dear, that you could not sever yourself from it."

"No, Jack. It is your loyalty, your sense of duty, that is speaking now. Or perhaps you are far enough away from what has happened not to see it as clearly as I do. You have become a part of another life, and your future belongs to that life and to the woman who has also become a part of it."

"You can't mean this, Helen. Think what you are saying!"

"I do mean it, just as I meant it when I said so before, when you failed to comprehend. It is Inez who must be your companion in this new life."

Armstrong did not remonstrate, as he had done before. It was impossible to misunderstand the conviction in Helen's voice. He could no longer attribute it to jealousy or to caprice; he could no longer fail to understand the meaning of her words.

"I have fully deserved all this," he said, at length. "When you first told me of Miss Thayer's feeling toward me I did not--I could not--believe it. Never once, during all the hours we were together, was there anything to confirm what you said."

"You did not notice this any more than you noticed other things which happened, Jack; you were too completely absorbed. But that does not alter the fact, does it?"

"No; the fact remains the same. It has only been since the accident that I have realized it; and this is one of the two problems which I have to straighten out."

"Then you do know now that Inez loves you?"

Armstrong bowed his head.

"What is it that has at last convinced you?"

He hesitated for a moment. "It seems uncanny, Helen, but I have been 'seeing things.'"

She looked at him questioningly. "Seeing things?" she repeated.

"Yes; you will think I have lost my mind again, just as I did; but the doctor says it is not unusual. Inez was alone with me, after the accident, you know, in the cottage."

"Well?" encouraged Helen, breathlessly.

"She thought me dead, and--this is brutal to repeat to you, Helen."

"No, no--go on!"

"Why, she said she loved me--that is all."

"But you were unconscious, Jack--you did not know what was happening."

"Not then, but later. It came to me yesterday, while lying on the couch,--almost as in a vision. I spoke to the doctor about it, and he said that sometimes such things do happen. If you had not told me what you did I probably should have thought it nothing but an uncomfortable dream, but as it was, of course I understood."

"Are you sure now that it was no dream?"

"Yes; I questioned Miss Thayer about some of the details--not the most vital ones, of course--and she corroborated them. But telling you all this will only make matters worse."

"No, Jack; I know about it already. Inez has told me everything, and the poor girl is distracted. I am glad that at last you are convinced."

"You knew all this?" He looked at her in amazement. "You knew it, and have let her stay here?"

"It is right that she should remain," Helen answered, firmly.

Armstrong's voice broke for a moment. "And I said you were jealous!" he reproached himself. Then he continued his appeal. "But granting all this, it cannot settle the matter, deeply as I deplore it. My own blindness and stupidity are to blame for it, and I must accept the full responsibility; but my love for you has never and could never be transferred to her or to any one else. I have been criminally neglectful, I have been culpably dense, but through it all you, and you alone, have been in my heart. I have longed to say this to you even while the spell was on me. I have longed to fold you in my arms and ease the pain I have seen you suffer, but I found myself powerless in this as in all else. Can you not--will you not--believe what I say?"

Helen looked up into her husband's face before she replied.

"Sometimes I wish you were not so conscientious, Jack--but of course I don't mean that; only it would make it easier for me to adhere to my determination to do what I know is right. I was sure that this moment would arrive; I know your ideas of duty and loyalty, and I know that you would sacrifice yourself and your future rather than be false to either. I believe that you are sincere in thinking that your sentiments toward Inez are purely platonic--I am sure they would be so long as you were not free to have them otherwise."

"Then why do you insist that they are otherwise?"

"I don't insist--I am simply accepting things as they really are, even though I must suffer by doing so. You are the only one who does not realize it, unless it be Inez herself. Cerini told me, 'I have never seen two individualities cast in so identical a mould.' Professor Tesso, who saw you at work together at the library, said, 'There is a perfect union of well-mated souls'; you yourself, when we returned from that moonlight ride, said to her, 'You are the only one who understands me.' It has simply been your absorption in your work and your loyalty to me which has kept you from seeing it yourself."

"Cerini said that--Tesso saw us at the library?" Armstrong looked at Helen in bewilderment. "You thought my remark to Miss Thayer possessed anything more than momentary significance?" His face assumed an expression of still greater concern. "I have, indeed, been more culpable than I realized. Is it not enough if I tell you that you are all wrong--that I do not love any one except the one person I have a right to love?"

Helen smiled sadly. "No, Jack," she replied, kindly but firmly, "it is all too clear. When you return to your real life, as you must do, you will return to your real self as well. Then you will know that I have saved you from the greatest mistake of all. You and Inez are meant for each other, and always have been." She looked up with a brave but unsuccessful attempt to smile. "Perhaps our little experience together has been necessary in the development of us both, dear. If so, it will make it easier to believe that our mutual suffering will not have been in vain."

"I will never accept it, Helen!" cried Armstrong, desperately in earnest. "Your devotion to this false idea will do more than all I have done to wreck our lives. You must listen to reason."

"Don't make it any harder for me than it is," Helen begged, her voice choking. "I am trying to talk calmly, and to do what I know I must do; but I have been through so much already. Please don't make it any harder."

Armstrong longed to comfort her, but he knew that she would repulse him if he tried. He watched the conflict through which the girl was passing and was overwhelmed by the sense of his own responsibility. He realized how near the tension was to the breaking-point, and dared not pursue the subject further. Taking both her hands in his, he gazed long into her eyes now filled with tears.

"If to give you up is the necessary penalty for the sorrow I have brought to you," he said, quietly, his voice breaking as he spoke, "it shall be done--for your sake, no matter what it means to me; but my love for you is beyond anything I have ever known before."

XXIX

There had been many visitors at the villa during Armstrong's illness and convalescence. Cerini had called several times, being most solicitous for the speedy recovery of his _protege_; and the Contessa Morelli, temporarily thwarted in the solution of her problem, took advantage of the proximity of her villa to be frequently on the spot, where she could observe the progress of affairs under the suddenly changed conditions.

Armstrong had long desired to question the contessa further in regard to the disquieting conversation he had held with her upon the occasion of their first meeting; but the rapidity with which his latent impressions had become definite realities made him unwilling to allow any new developments to add to the complexity of the situation as he had now come to know it. After his interview with Helen, however, he was convinced that matters had reached their climax, and he grasped any additional information as possible material to be used in the solving of his double dilemma. His opportunity came on the following day, when he found himself alone with the contessa upon the veranda, Helen having been called to another part of the villa by some household demand.

After Helen had made her excuses, Armstrong felt himself to be the subject of a careful scrutiny on the part of the contessa. He looked up quickly and met her glance squarely. Amelie had a way of making those she chose feel well acquainted with her, and Armstrong, during his convalescence, had proved interesting.

"Well," he asked, smiling, "what do you think of him?"

It was the contessa's turn to smile, and the question caught her so unexpectedly that the smile developed into a hearty laugh.

"I have been trying to make up my mind," she replied, frankly. "At first I thought him a human thinking-machine, all head and no heart, but I am beginning to believe that my early impressions were at fault."

"It gratifies me to hear you say that," Armstrong answered, calmly. "I presume those early impressions of yours were formed at the library, when Miss Thayer and I came under your observation."

"Yes," replied the contessa, unruffled by the quiet sarcasm which she could but feel. "You see, I have lived here in Italy for several years and have become accustomed to the sight of saint worship; but it is a novel experience to see the saint come down off his pedestal and prove himself to have perfectly good warm blood coursing through his veins."

"Don't you find it a bit difficult to picture me with all my worldly attributes even as a temporary saint?"

"Not at all," the contessa answered. "Most of the saints possessed worldly attributes before they attained the dignity of statues. But think of the confusion among their worshippers should they follow your example and again assume the flesh! I imagine their embarrassment would almost equal yours."

Amelie spoke indifferently, but Armstrong felt the thrust. It was evident that she had no idea of dropping the subject, and Jack saw nothing else but to accept it as cheerfully as possible.

"Why not say 'quite'?" he asked.

"Because the saints were wifeless. Perhaps that is what made it possible for them to be saints."

Armstrong laughed in spite of himself. "If modern women were to be canonized, you undoubtedly think they should be selected from the married class?"

"Canonizing hardly covers it," the contessa replied; "they belong among the martyrs."

"But you have not told me why you now feel that your early impressions were in error," Armstrong resumed, sensing danger along the path which they had almost taken, and really eager to learn how far his attitude had impressed others. The contessa regarded him critically.

"There are many kinds of men," she began, "and to a woman of the world it is a necessity to classify those whom she meets."

"Indeed?" queried Armstrong. "You are throwing some most interesting side-lights upon a subject which my education has entirely overlooked."

"Am I?" Amelie asked, innocently. "But your education has been so far developed in other directions that you can easily recognize the importance of what I say. A woman who meets the world face to face must be able to estimate the elements against which she has to contend."

"Into how many classes do you divide us?" Armstrong was interested in her naive presentment.

"The three principal divisions are, of course, single men, married men, and widowers, but the subdivisions are really more important. For my own use I find it more convenient to separate those I meet into four classes--the interesting, the uninteresting, the safe, and the dangerous."

"You have developed an absolute system," Armstrong asserted.

"Yes, indeed," Amelie responded, cheerfully; "without one you men would have too distinct an advantage over us."

"I wish you would enlarge on your classification a little more. It is gratifying to me to know that members of my sex receive such careful consideration."

"Well, suppose we eliminate the uninteresting--they really don't count except in considering matrimony; then we have to weigh the material advantages they offer against their lack of interest. This brings us down to the interesting and safe, and the interesting and dangerous."

"Have I the honor to be included in one of these two classes?"

"Yes," the contessa replied, frankly.

"May I ask which? You see, my curiosity is getting the upper hand."

Amelie threw back her head with a hearty laugh. "I was certainly wrong in my first diagnosis," she said. "A man who was merely a thinking-machine would possess no curiosity. Usually a learned man is entirely safe."

"Then you really consider me dangerous?" There was a tone in Armstrong's voice which caused the contessa to look up at him quickly.

"Most men would consider that a compliment, Mr. Armstrong."

Receiving no reply, Amelie continued:

"Your wife has such original ideas! I have found my acquaintance with her positively refreshing."

"How does this bear upon our present conversation?" Armstrong inquired, still weighed down by the contessa's estimate of him. Amelie's frankness showed that no doubt existed in her mind as to his attitude toward Miss Thayer, and he felt that denials would be worse than useless. If impressions such as these lay in the mind of a casual observer like the contessa it was but natural that they should assume greater proportions to Helen; and it was with a foreboding that he heard her name mentioned in the present conversation. Amelie, however, could not sense the effect of her words upon her companion.

"Because we once discussed the same subject," she replied to his question, "and her attitude was most unusual. She even said that were she convinced that her husband really loved some other woman she would step aside and give him a clear field."

"Did she say that?" Armstrong demanded.

"She did," asserted the contessa. "You are a very lucky man, Mr. Armstrong," she continued, looking into his face meaningly; "my husband is not so fortunate."

While Armstrong hesitated in order to make no mistake in his reply, Helen returned accompanied by Cerini, and the moment when he could have formulated an answer had passed. The old man held up a finger reproachfully as he saw the contessa.

"You have never made another appointment to study those manuscripts with me," he said, as he took her hand. "Tell me that your interest has not flagged."

The librarian spoke feelingly, although he tried to conceal his disappointment. It was such a triumph that his work should appeal to one so devoted to a life of social gayety. Amelie remembered her interview with him at the library and felt that she deserved the reproach.

"Surely not," she replied, with so much apparent sincerity in her voice that the old man believed her and was mollified. "I have even received a new impetus from listening to Mr. Armstrong's enthusiastic account of his work with you and his impatience to return to it."

Armstrong glanced quickly at Helen as the contessa attributed to him a desire so opposed to the definite statement he had made the day before, while Cerini smiled contentedly. Helen gave no sign of having particularly noticed the remark, but Jack felt keenly his inability at that moment to set himself right.

"I was just about to take my departure," Amelie continued, "and I am glad not to be obliged to leave the invalid alone. I know how delighted you will be to take my place," she said to Cerini.

The old man dropped into the chair the contessa left vacant, while Armstrong watched the two figures until they disappeared in the hallway. Then he turned to his friend--but it was to Cerini the priest, the father-confessor, rather than to Cerini the librarian. He felt the seriousness of the situation more acutely than at any time since a realization of its complexity came to him. Cerini watched him curiously.

"You are not so well to-day," he said, at length. "You must go slowly, my son, and give Nature ample time to make her repairs."

"I fear even Nature has no remedy sufficiently powerful to cure my malady," Armstrong replied, bitterly. "I would to God she had!"

Cerini was at a loss to understand his manner or his words.

"What has happened?" he asked, sympathetically. "Is there some complication of which I know not?"

Armstrong bowed his head, overcome for the moment by an overwhelming sense of his own impotency.

"What is it?" urged the old man, himself affected by his companion's attitude. "I have missed you sadly at the library these weeks, and I am impatient for your return."

"I shall never return!" cried Armstrong, fiercely. "I have proved myself utterly unworthy of the work I undertook with you."

"My son! my son!" Cerini was aghast at what he heard. Then his voice softened as he thought he divined the explanation.

"Slowly, slowly," he said, soothingly. "It is too soon to put so heavy a burden upon your brain after the shock it has sustained. There is no haste. Your friends at the library will be patient, as you must be."

Armstrong easily read what was passing through the librarian's mind, and it increased his bitterness against himself. Cerini's calmness, however, quieted him, and he was more contained as he replied.

"I wish that the facts were as you think," he said, decisively. "It would be a positive relief to me if I could believe that my mind was still unbalanced as a result of the accident, but it is so nearly recovered that I must consider myself practically well. But I am glad of this chance to tell you how we have both been deceived. It will be a comfort to have you act as my confessor, and if your affection still holds after my recital I know that you will advise me as to what future course I must pursue."

In tense, clear-cut sentences Armstrong poured out to Cerini the story of the past months as he looked back upon them. He was frank in speaking of what he believed to be his accomplishments, as he was pitiless in his arraignment of himself in his failures. He showed how he had assimilated the lessons of the past only in his capacity of scribe; he explained how self-centred, selfish, and neglectful of his duty toward others he had been in his personal life. He spoke freely of his companionship with Miss Thayer, of her unquestioned affection for him, and of the impressions which had been made upon Helen and the Contessa Morelli. He insisted simply yet forcefully upon his own loyalty to Helen, not from a sense of duty, as she firmly believed, but because his devotion had never wavered.

In speaking of his wife Armstrong went into minute detail, even going back to his early attempts to interest her in what had later become his grand passion. He described her personal attributes, her love of the present rather than the past, her protective attitude toward her friend even in the face of such distressing circumstances; her generosity toward him; and finally her unalterable conviction that their separation was imperative.

Cerini listened in breathless silence as Armstrong's story progressed. He himself had played a part in the drama of which his companion was ignorant, and a sense of his own responsibility came to the old man with subtle force. He recalled his first meeting with Helen at the library, he remembered their later conversations, and in his contemplations he almost forgot, for the moment, the man sitting in front of him in his consideration of the splendid development, which he had witnessed without fully realizing it, in this woman whom he had pronounced unfitted by nature to enter into this side of her husband's work, as she had longed to do. Now, as a result of his lack of foresight, she proposed to eliminate herself from what she considered to be her husband's problem. "It has been more far-reaching than even you realize," she had said to him at the reception at Villa Godilombra, and this was what she had meant.

It was several moments after Armstrong ceased speaking before Cerini raised his eyes, and to Jack's surprise he saw that they were filled with tears. He naturally attributed it to the librarian's affection for him and his sympathy for his sorrow.

"I should not have told you this, padre," he said, sadly, pressing the hand which the old man laid tenderly upon his. "The fault is mine, and I should not try to shirk the full responsibility by sharing it with you."

"It is mine to share with you, my son," Cerini replied, firmly. "You have erred, as you state. You have been to blame for not giving out again, as the example of the master-spirits of the past should have taught you, those glorious lessons which impart the joy of living to those who give as well as to those who receive. But my error is even heavier. I have lived all my life in this atmosphere, drinking in the knowledge and the spirit which have come to you only within the past few months; yet I failed to recognize in your wife the natural embodiment of all that the best in humanism teaches. What you and I have endeavored to assimilate she has felt and expressed as naturally as she has breathed. She has shown us humanism in its highest development, purified and strengthened by her own fine nature, even though we have given her no opportunity for expression. Thank God we have recognized it at last!"

"You really believe that?" cried Armstrong, recalling his own earlier and less-defined conviction.

"Beyond a doubt," Cerini answered. "Let us find her, that we may tell her what a victory she has won."

Armstrong placed a restraining hand upon the old man's arm. "Not yet," he said, gently but firmly. "There is much still to be done to prepare her for this knowledge. At present she would not accept it."

"We must convince her."

"First of all I must make my peace with Miss Thayer," Armstrong replied. "Until that complication is relieved there is no hope."

"Do you feel strong enough for that?" asked Cerini, anxiously.

"It requires more than strength, padre," Armstrong replied, seriously; "it requires faith in myself, which at present is sadly lacking."

The old man rose and stood for a moment beside Armstrong's half-reclining figure. Bending down, he took his face in his hands and looked full into his eyes.

"Let me give you that faith," he said, affectionately. "You have already learned by sad experience that you are not the master of Fate. Let me tell you that by the same token you are not the victim of Fate. Nature, unerring in her wisdom, is now giving you the privilege of being co-partner with her in the final solving of your great personal problem. Accept the offered opportunity, my son, and show yourself finally worthy of it."

XXX

Helen had not overlooked the contessa's remark to Cerini, even though she gave no evidence at the time of having heard it. Her conversation with Jack had given her thoughts much food to feed upon. His words were so welcome, after the long breach, his manner so sincere, that she had been nearer to the yielding-point than he imagined. She had wondered if, after all, her attitude was justified, in view of his expressed desire to return to the same relations which had previously given them both such happiness. Jack's statement that her insistence upon the present conditions would do more to wreck their happiness than anything which he had done, made its impression upon her. Nothing but the previous intensity of her conviction that she must yield her place to Inez had held her to the self-appointed duty which she found so difficult to perform.

When the contessa repeated to Cerini what appeared to be an expression of her husband's impatience to return to his work Helen felt all hesitation vanish. Jack sympathized with her suffering, and would do all which lay in his power to make amends. She knew that he would give up all idea of future work, no matter at what sacrifice to himself, rather than add another straw to the burden which he now saw was nearly bearing her down. Yet the affection which she felt for him refused to be strangled. His very insistence, even though she was convinced that it was prompted by his sense of duty, fanned the embers into flame at a time when she was certain that at last their fire had become extinct. It was further evidence of her weakness, she told herself, and she would make superhuman efforts to adhere to the duty which lay plainly enough before her.

As she was leaving, the contessa placed her arm about Helen's waist and whispered to her:

"Don't think me meddlesome, my dear, but you will make a great mistake not to stick close beside that big, splendid husband of yours. They all do it, and I imagine he has been almost circumspect compared with most of them. Send the girl away and see if you can't make him forget his affinity. He is worth the effort, my dear--believe me, he is worth the effort."

Helen was so taken by surprise by the contessa's words that she stood speechless, looking at her with dull, lifeless eyes as she stepped into the tonneau and waved a smiling farewell as the motor-car rolled out of the court-yard. So the contessa was aware of the situation, and was also convinced of Jack's attachment for Inez! This was too horrible--she could not endure it! Matters must be brought to a head soon or she would die of mortification! She could not return to the veranda where she had left Cerini and Jack together, but went up-stairs to her room, where she locked the door and threw herself upon the bed in a paroxysm of tears.

Armstrong, on the contrary, had gained strength from Cerini's sympathy. He would accept the offered opportunity and see if at last he could not prove himself worthy of such glorious co-partnership. Unlike his previous efforts, if he succeeded it would tend to restore Helen's happiness as well, and this gave him an added incentive.

It was the afternoon of the next day before he was able to make his opportunity. Inez had taken a book and secreted herself in Helen's "snuggery" in the garden, but Armstrong's watchful eyes followed her. Waiting until she had time to become well settled, he strolled around the garden, finally appearing at the entrance to prevent her escape. To his surprise she made no such effort, and appeared more at ease than at any time since the accident.

"Have you come to join me?" she asked, with much of her former bearing.

"If I may," he replied, advancing to the seat and taking the place she made for him beside her.

"How famously you are getting on!" she said, laying down the volume; "you are more like yourself than I have seen you since the awful accident."

"If I may say so," Armstrong replied, watching her closely, "I was just thinking the same of you."

Inez flushed. "You are right," she answered, frankly, after a moment's pause.

Armstrong was distinctly relieved by her unexpected attitude. As he looked back he realized that there had been a change in her bearing toward him, particularly during the past week; but until now he had not appreciated how rapidly her unnatural manner had been returning to what it was during the early days of their acquaintance. The apparent effort to avoid him had disappeared, although he knew of no more reason for this than he had originally seen cause for its existence. Whatever the reason, the change had undoubtedly taken place, and it made matters easier for him.

"We have passed through much together, Miss Thayer," he began. "I wonder if we realize how much."

"It has certainly been an unusual experience," she admitted. "I expressed this to you at the library--do you remember? As I said then, it could hardly occur again."

"I appreciate that now," Armstrong replied, in a low voice; "at that time I do not think I did."

"There was much which you could not appreciate then," continued Inez; "and as I look back upon it there is much which I cannot explain to myself. In fact, there is a great deal that I blame myself for."

"The blame belongs to me, Miss Thayer," Armstrong asserted, firmly.

"For being away from Helen so much?"

"Yes; and for many other acts of selfishness and neglect. I am to blame for all that you feel against yourself."

"Against myself?" Inez repeated.

Armstrong paused long before he continued. "You have passed through this spell with me," he said, at length. "You, better than any one else, know its power, and can understand the cause of my attitude toward you and Helen, which was as inexplicable as it was unpardonable. And because you understand this I believe that I shall find you the more ready to forgive."

"There is nothing for which you stand in need of my forgiveness," Inez said, in a low tone. "On the contrary, there is much for which I have to thank you. It was a new world to which you introduced me--one which I should not otherwise have known; and having known it, nothing can ever take it from me."

"If matters had only stopped there," Armstrong continued, "I should have accomplished just what I had hoped to do. The fascination of the work so held me, and my desire to further the principles which seemed to me to represent all which made life worth the living resulted in blinding me to the possibility that you, perhaps, were not affected to a similar degree. Your assistance was so valuable, your companionship so congenial that I never once realized that I was running any risk of not performing my full duty toward you as well as toward Helen."

Inez could not fail to comprehend the import of his words, and a feeling of thankfulness passed over her that this conversation had not come earlier. The days which had passed since she confided to Helen the secret which she had so long carried alone had, in their way, been as full of chaotic conditions as had Armstrong's; yet it was but recently that she had come to realize the full importance of what had really happened. The days at the library, as she looked back upon them, seemed as a dream. She could close her eyes and bring back the intoxication of those moments alone with Armstrong in which she had silently revelled, while he had applied himself to the task before him unconscious of what was taking place. She could not deny herself the guilty pleasure of recalling them, yet little by little these thoughts had become disassociated from the man with whom she now came in almost hourly contact. With this disassociation came a welcome relief. The dread which she had felt of seeing him and hearing his voice disappeared as suddenly as it had come. She wondered at it, but she accepted it eagerly without waiting for an explanation.

With her return to more normal conditions her solicitude for Helen increased. She was conscious of her friend's unhappiness, yet she, perhaps, of all the household, was least aware of the extent of the breach between her and Armstrong. Helen, naturally perhaps, had confined her conversation upon this subject to Uncle Peabody and her husband, so Inez had no thought other than that all would straighten itself out now that Jack had become himself again. She had believed that Helen alone shared her secret with her, so it was with surprise and mortification that she became aware that Armstrong himself knew of what had taken place. This was even more of an ordeal to face than when she made her confession to Helen, yet it was one which ought to be met with absolute frankness.

"I understand what you mean," she replied, the color still showing in her face, "and I am glad that this opportunity has come for me to speak freely, even at the risk of losing your esteem. It is quite true that I, too, found myself beneath a spell--but besides this one which influenced you there was also another and a different one. I see no reason why I should be ashamed to say that this other spell was unconsciously exerted by a great scholar, a noble friend, a loyal husband. The effect of it was for a time overpowering, but now I can acknowledge it without injuring any one and express my gratitude for an influence which must always act for my best good."

"Miss Thayer!" Armstrong cried, overwhelmed by the revulsion which the girl's words brought to him. "I beg of you not to make virtues out of my errors; I cannot accept a tribute such as that, knowing myself to be unworthy of it. Can you not see that I should have guarded you from that spell, both for your sake and for Helen's?"

Inez smiled in real happiness that the break had at last been made. "You have given me far more than you have taken away, dear friend," she replied, gratefully; "now that the experience is past I appreciate it more than ever. But promise me that you will not give up this work because of what we all have been through."

Armstrong shook his head. "I shall not take such chances again," he said.

"It could never repeat itself," Inez urged. "Because one has been wounded by the thorn he failed to see is no reason why he should never pluck another rose."

"But suppose that in plucking the rose something fell out from next the heart which was inexpressibly dear to him and was lost forever?"

Inez looked up quickly. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"Do you not know that Helen insists upon a separation?"

"A separation!" Inez repeated, rising to her feet; "why, she worships you! Surely there is some mistake."

"No; she is convinced that our marriage was all wrong, and that she stands between me and the continuance of this work, which she argues is essential for my development and happiness. It is ridiculous, of course, but I cannot move her."

"She is right about the work," the girl said, decidedly; "but there is no one in the world better fitted to enter into it with you than she, if she but knew it. As I said, you will never take it up in the same way again, but having learned what it means you can never eliminate it from your life; and this should draw you and Helen even closer together."

"My one remaining labor is to convince her of this," Armstrong replied, feelingly.

"And I will help you do it."

Armstrong looked at her steadily for a moment. "There is another point upon which she insists, of which I have not told you," he said.

Inez waited for him to continue.

"She believes that you and I are foreordained for each other," Armstrong said, bluntly, "and she proposes to step aside to make the realization of this possible."

The girl gazed at her companion in silent amazement. So this was the cause of Helen's suffering--this was the price she was willing to pay as a tribute to her friendship for her and her love for her husband!

"The brave, brave girl!" Inez cried, almost overcome by her emotion. "I must make her understand that the Jack Armstrong I loved was killed at the foot of the hill of Settignano. Dear, dear Helen! it is now my privilege to give her back her happiness as she gave me back mine!"

XXXI

It had been to Uncle Peabody that Helen had turned during all this period, but it was for comfort and strength rather than for advice. The problem was hers, and she alone must finally solve it. She had thought it settled until her conversation with Jack, which caused a momentary wavering. She repeated Armstrong's words to Uncle Peabody, and his absolute conviction that her husband's present attitude was a normal and final expression encouraged her to question whether there might not be some other solution than the one upon which she had determined. Still, it was only a questioning; as yet she was unprepared to share Uncle Peabody's conviction.

"Don't lean too far backward," he had said to her, "in your efforts to stand by your principles. I have seen things which were called principles at first become tyrants and do damage out of all proportion to the good they would have done had the conditions not changed."

"It is the conditions I am watching, uncle," Helen had replied. "I have no 'principles,' as you call them, which will not joyfully yield themselves. I must not--I will not--stand in the way either of Jack's happiness or of his development. If I can make myself see any way by which we can stay together without accomplishing one or the other of these mistakes, God knows how eagerly I will again pick up the thread of life."

Uncle Peabody had folded her in his great arms again, as he had done so many times lately.

"People have sometimes told me that I am a philosopher," he said, huskily. "They have seen me meet death in a dear friend, or even one closer to me, with calmness, sending the departed spirit a wireless 'bon-voyage' message and considering the incident as fortunate, as if he had received a promotion. But when I see one as dear to me as you are, gasping for breath in what has seemed to be a hopeless and prolonged struggle for that life which love alone can give you, I must confess that my stock of philosophy, such as it is, seems sadly inadequate."

Now had come the necessity of repeating to him what the contessa had said, which gave Helen double pain, knowing, as she did, how much relief her last conversation had given him.

"I can't believe it, Helen," Uncle Peabody said, decisively. "Whatever else one may say of Jack Armstrong, he is honest, and I can't believe him insincere in what he said to you."

"It is not insincerity, dear," she replied, wearily. "He is trying to deceive himself.--What is it, Annetta?" she asked, almost petulantly, of the maid as she approached.

"Monsignor Cerini--" began the maid.

"Mr. Armstrong is on the veranda," Helen interrupted.

"But he asks for the madama."

"For me?" Helen was incredulous. "Show him out here, Annetta."

The librarian's face beamed genially as he greeted her and Uncle Peabody.

"Has the maid not made a mistake?" Helen asked. "Is it not our invalid whom you wish to see?"

"No, my daughter, it is you whom I seek. I have come to make a full though long-delayed acknowledgment."

Helen glanced over to Uncle Peabody, thoroughly mystified.

"Your husband and I were talking of you yesterday," he continued, "and we both are deeply concerned to find how erroneous have been our estimates and how slow we have been to recognize the truth."

So Jack had sent him to plead his cause, Helen told herself, and in her heart she resented the interference. It was unlike him to intrust so important a matter as this to another, yet perhaps it was a further evidence of the new conditions.

"Shall I not leave you to yourselves?" queried Uncle Peabody.

"By no means!" Cerini cried, hastily. "It is most fitting that you should hear what I am about to say. Do you remember the first day I met you at the library?" he continued, addressing his question to Helen.

She closed her eyes for a moment, and an involuntary shadow of pain passed over her face as she replied, quietly:

"Do you think I could ever forget it?"

Cerini saw it all, and it touched him deeply. "I was unkind to you that day, my daughter--even cruel. I thought I understood, but later events have shown me that my judgment led me far astray."

The old man had come to a realization at last! This, at all events, was a comfort to her.

"Only in part," she replied, trying to speak cheerfully. "The character-building was going on just as you said."

"It was," Cerini said, forcefully--"to a greater extent, I believe, than any one of us knew. My only excuse is that I was possessed with a preconceived idea--the very thing which I so much object to in others."

"I don't think I quite understand," Helen replied. "Do you mean that, after all his efforts, my husband is right in his conviction that his work has been a failure?"

"It is not of your husband that I am thinking now," the librarian answered; "it is of myself--and you."

"Of me?" Helen was genuinely surprised. "But I have never entered into the consideration at all, where the work at the library was concerned."

"You should have done so; that is just the point."

"I wanted to," Helen cried; "but you told me that I was quite incapable of doing so."

"I know I did," replied the librarian, bowing his head; "and that is where I made my great mistake."

"It would have stopped their work where it was--you said so yourself."

Cerini again bowed his head. "All part of the same mistake," he admitted. "Had I encouraged you at that time you would not only have added much to the work itself, but you would have saved your husband from his own great error. I have been much to blame, my daughter, and you must not hold him responsible for a fault which is really mine."

Helen tried to fathom what was in the old man's mind. She could not question his sincerity, yet his words seemed a mockery. Jack had evidently taken him freely into his confidence, so there was no reason why she should not speak freely.

"Mr. Armstrong has apparently told you how unfortunately his experience has ended in its effect upon our personal relations. Knowing this, I am sure you would not intentionally wound me further by seeking to restore matters to a false basis; yet I can understand your words in no other way. As you said of my husband, that day in the library, this time it is your heart and not your head which finds expression."

The librarian gasped with apprehension. "Daughter! daughter!" he cried, "have I not made myself clear! Then let me do so now before any possible misunderstanding can enter in. I am a humanist by profession--until now I believed myself a modern humanist. When I first knew your husband, he was a youth full of intelligent appreciation of those ancient marvels which I delighted to show him. Imagine my joy, twelve years later, to welcome him again, grown to man's estate, and to find that the early seeds which I had planted within him had sent out roots and tendrils so strong as to hold him firmly in their grasp. Then he brought Miss Thayer to me--at first I took her for you, as she was the kind of woman I had expected him to marry. She entered into his work with him with the same spirit as his own, and my foolish old heart rejoiced that such splendid material had been placed in my hands for the moulding."

"Why repeat all this?" Helen interrupted; "I know it all and accept it all, but what agony to pass through it still another time!"

"Forgive me, my daughter," Cerini replied, quickly; "we are past the period of your sacrifice now, and have reached the point of your triumph."

"My triumph!" cried Helen, bitterly. "Why do you hurt me so?"

"Patience, dear," Uncle Peabody urged, quietly. "Monsignor Cerini has some purpose in mind which makes this necessary, I am sure."

"I am unfortunate in my presentation," the librarian apologized. "The point I wish to make is that up to the time I met Mrs. Armstrong I had known but one kind of humanism. I myself had studied the master-spirits of the past, and had assimilated the principles which they taught. Mr. Armstrong and Miss Thayer assimilated their lessons in the same way as I had done; but we all failed to recognize in this dear lady the natural expression--the personification--of all that we ourselves had labored so assiduously to acquire."

Both Helen and Uncle Peabody were listening to the old man's words with breathless attention.

"You mean that Mrs. Armstrong is a natural humanist?" Uncle Peabody queried.

"The most perfect expression of all that humanism contains which I can ever hope to see," Cerini replied, with feeling. "I, more than any one, have prevented the expression of these attributes which are your natural heritage; now let me help to merge them with your husband's undoubted talents."

"You cannot mean it," Helen said, weakly, sobering down after the first exhilaration of the old man's words. "I am no humanist, either natural or otherwise. Monsignor Cerini evidently means to give me a new confidence, but it is a mistaken kindness."

"You must listen to what he says, Helen," Uncle Peabody insisted. "I have known Cerini for many years, and he would make no such statement unless he felt it to be true."

"It is all as unknown to me as some foreign language I have never heard before," she protested. "I know, for I have tried to understand."

"Does a bird have to know the technique of music before it can sing?" asked Cerini, quietly.

"Oh, this is agony for me!" cried Helen, in despair. "I can only see in it another opening of the wound, another barb later to be torn from my heart."

"Be reasonable, child," urged Uncle Peabody, soothingly. "It seems to me that instead of all this Cerini has brought to you--to all of us--the solution of our problem. Let me ask him a few questions, while you control yourself and try to understand."

Helen acquiesced silently. Cerini's words had seemed to give her hope, yet she dared not allow herself to hope again. Limp from exhaustion, worn out by her ceaseless mental struggle, she had no strength even to oppose.

"Mrs. Armstrong has taken her present position," began Uncle Peabody, "because she feels absolutely that her husband's real expression of himself is that which he has shown her while under the influence of this spell which his love of the old-time learning has woven about him."

"She is right," replied the librarian, "except that by an unusual combination of circumstances this influence overpowered him by its strength, and he should not be held wholly responsible for his abnormal acts. This is not the first time I have seen this happen. There is a peculiar languor in the atmosphere, here in Florence, impregnated as it is with the romance of centuries, which is absolutely intoxicating to the mind, but it is rarely that it succeeds in making itself so felt upon an Anglo-Saxon temperament. Mr. Armstrong ought never, for the sake of his own individuality, to give up his fondness for the _literae humaniores_, but it is entirely out of the question for him ever again to become so subject to their control."

"She senses this quite as strongly as you do; but beyond this she feels that he can never retain the development which has come to him here except in an atmosphere filled with a comprehension of all which he holds so dear."

"Mrs. Armstrong is still in the right," assented Cerini, gravely; "but there is one point which she still fails to understand. Her husband's work has been humanistic, but he himself is but just ready to begin to be a humanist. She is the one best fitted in every way to join him at this point, and their two personalities, thus united, can but produce splendid results."

"I cannot believe it," Helen interrupted, speaking with decision. "It has been from Inez and not from me that he has received his inspiration. Things are no different now from what they have been: Inez is still the one to inspire him to attain his best."

"You are wrong, dear," spoke a low voice behind them, as Inez threw her arms about Helen and embraced her warmly. "I surmised what you were discussing, and took this first opportunity to do my part toward straightening things out."

Helen sat upright and looked steadily into Inez' smiling face, completely freed for the first time in many weeks from its care-worn expression.

"You--you could not look like that if you understood," she stammered, still startled by her friend's sudden appearance.

"Mr. Armstrong and I have talked it all over, and at last I understand what should have been clear to me long ago. You are a dear, brave girl, Helen, and deserve all the happiness which is in store for you."

"Happiness--to me! Oh, Inez," Helen cried, "why do you all mock me with that word? There can be no happiness for me, and, unless I do what I propose, it means misery for every one instead of for me alone."

"No, dear," Inez replied, softly, gently smoothing Helen's hair as she rested her tired head upon her shoulder. "No--there can be nothing but happiness, now that all is understood."

"But you--you love Jack, Inez."

The girl colored as Helen spoke thus freely in the presence of others, but her voice was firm as she replied.

"Helen, dear," she said, "here in the presence of Mr. Cartwright and Monsignor Cerini I ask your permission to keep in my heart the image of the man I learned to love while we both were beneath the spell. That man no longer exists in the flesh, but I still worship his memory. He can never exist again except as a part of an experience which could never be repeated. Is this asking too much, dear?"

"What does it all mean?" cried Helen, gazing at her helplessly--"what does it all mean?"

"It means that there have been two Jacks, Helen--one of whom became transformed for a time into a veritable master-spirit of the past. To this man, I admit, I gave a devotion which I shall never--could never--give to any other; but he died, Helen, when the spell broke against that wall at the foot of the hill of Settignano. This man, even during his existence, gave me no devotion in return, and knew not the passion which he inspired in me. He had no heart, but it was not his heart I worshipped. To me his mind--broad, comprehensive, and understanding--stood for all that life could give. The other Jack--the man you married--has never wavered in the love he gave you from the first. He has suffered from the influence of the second personality in that he was forced into the background by the greater strength of this sub-conscious self; but he has also gained from its influence in the development which we all have seen. My Jack is dead, but yours still lives. He needs you, and he longs for the return to him of the wife he has always loved."

Inez paused after her long appeal, eager to read a favorable response in the pale face still gazing at her, but no change came over the set features. Once or twice Helen started to speak, but no words came. Uncle Peabody and Cerini had followed Inez intently, realizing that she was pleading the cause far better than they could. Affected by the scene before them, they found themselves unable to break the silence. At last Helen's voice came back to her.

"He longs for the return to him of the wife he has always loved?"

She repeated Inez' words slowly, in the form of a question.

"Yes, dear," her friend replied; "he is waiting for you now."

"Oh no, no, no!" Helen cried, brokenly, covering her face with her hands; "it is all a mistake. You are all doing this for my sake, and it is not the truth--it is not the truth!"

"You are ill, Helen!" cried Inez, alarmed by her appearance as well as by the wildness of her words; "come, let me take you to your room."

Unresistingly Helen suffered herself to be led into the house, leaving Uncle Peabody and Cerini looking apprehensively at each other.

"He longs--for the return to him--of the wife--he has always loved," Helen murmured over and over again, as Inez and Annetta undressed her and gently put her into bed. She seemed indifferent to what Inez said to her, and conscious only of the words which she kept repeating. Thoroughly frightened, Inez left her in Annetta's care while she rushed down-stairs to summon the doctor.

XXXII

For a few days Helen's condition was grave enough to warrant the anxiety which pervaded the entire household. Dr. Montgomery was again pressed into service, and found his skill taxed to the utmost to meet the condition in which he found his new patient.

"This is a great surprise to me," he remarked to Uncle Peabody, shaking his head ominously. "I have made it a point to watch Mrs. Armstrong throughout the shock and the strain of her husband's accident, anticipating that this nervous reaction might occur; but the time when it would naturally have happened is now long since passed."

Mr. Cartwright reluctantly explained to the doctor enough of the facts to assist him to a proper understanding of the case, and with sympathies fully enlisted his efforts were redoubled. The patient herself proved to be his greatest obstacle. Try as he would, he could not arouse in her any interest in her recovery. She accepted his services and those of the nurse without question, but in an apathetic manner. Armstrong, Inez, and Uncle Peabody hovered about the sick-chamber, eagerly grasping such information as the nurse and the doctor were able to give them, the anxious lines in their faces becoming deeper as the hours passed by.

But it was naturally upon Armstrong that the burden rested most heavily. He had been given the fullest details of the conference in the garden which immediately preceded Helen's collapse, and her replies to Cerini's appeal showed him, better even than his last conversation with her, how seriously she had been affected. For this he alone was responsible, and he was equally responsible for the illness which came as a final result of it all. He had hoped that when Cerini awakened her to a knowledge of her own splendid development she would accept his plea that they take up their new life together, but this expectation had been in vain.

"It has come too late," he said, bitterly, to Uncle Peabody. "We can only imagine the tortures through which the poor girl has passed by the severity of this reaction. She has been forcing herself to make this supreme sacrifice, which she believes is necessary, and has succeeded at last in destroying that love which I know she felt for me even through the worst of the crisis."

"She loves you still, Jack," replied Uncle Peabody, whose complete sympathy had been won by Armstrong's attitude during the trying days they were passing through together. "It is this which has made it so hard for her."

"It is only your ever-present optimism," the younger man replied, sadly. "Now that I see myself as I have really been during these past weeks, I cannot share it with you, much as I wish I could. If I, having actually experienced this spell and knowing its force, find it so impossible to explain to myself this long series of inexplicable events, how can I expect anything other than this generous but unfortunate conviction that her self-sacrifice is necessary?"

His face contracted as he spoke, and the veins upon his forehead stood out boldly against the fair skin, still colorless from his prolonged illness.

"And the worst of it all is that I can make no sacrifice which can possibly accomplish anything," he continued. "She--she must suffer on indefinitely for my selfishness, for my neglect."

"Let me speak to her just once more," Inez pleaded, in real pity for the man beside her. "When she is strong enough, perhaps I can make her understand."

"No," he replied, firmly, yet showing his appreciation of her thought for him, "she has endured enough already. The very mention of her husband can only revive unhappy memories. She shall at least be spared any further pleading on my behalf."

At last the doctor pronounced the danger-point passed, and the relief which the announcement brought gave Armstrong the necessary strength to enable him to take upon himself the details of packing and closing up the house, and getting everything in readiness to leave for home as soon as Helen should be strong enough to travel.

"The place has been hateful to her all these weeks," he explained, "and she must be freed from every scene which suggests what has passed."

As he went from one part of the villa to another, he was constantly reminded with painful forcefulness of the days which they had first enjoyed there together. The flowers in the garden, the singing of the birds in the trees, the distant view of the city--each possessed a personal significance. "I love the present," she had said to him--"I love the sky, the air, the sunshine, and the flowers."

Happy, buoyant nature--the natural humanist! She assimilated all that was best in life, and had he given her the opportunity would have breathed it out again to those around her richer and more inspiring because of its contact with her own rare self! Fool that he had been! With the riches of the past lying at his hand to be drawn upon for material, he had selfishly insisted that his own methods of using them were the only ones, recognizing too late the inspiration and the real assistance which she was amply able to give him in transforming these riches into even purer gold by the magic touch of the present. Armstrong groaned as the irony of it came to him.

Helen recovered slowly, and with a sweetness which touched the hearts of all about her. Inez and Uncle Peabody were with her much of the time, but Armstrong, true to his conviction that he had become distasteful to her, waited to be asked for; and Helen did not ask. The only event which happened to interrupt the even tenor of the days was a call from the Contessa Morelli, who was solicitous for her condition.

"Make some excuse," Helen said, quietly, to Inez, who announced the visitor. "Don't say anything to hurt her feelings, but I really can't see her. She does not understand the life I know and love, and I don't want to understand hers."

So it was Jack whom the contessa met as she took her departure.

"I am so relieved to know that your wife is in no danger," she said, sympathetically.

"So are we all," Armstrong replied, in a perfunctory way, still feeling ill at ease in the contessa's presence. "This villa will soon be considered as a hospital if any more of us become invalids."

"Miss Thayer is not ill?" inquired the contessa, smiling archly.

"She is quite well, I believe," he replied, coldly, but with an effort to be civil.

"How fortunate!" Amelie continued. "With Mrs. Armstrong in no danger and Miss Thayer in good health, you will soon, no doubt, resume your charming _tete-a-tetes_ at the library?"

The contessa was endeavoring to be mischievous, but Armstrong was in no mood for her pleasantries. He resented the words no less than the expression upon her face. Yet he himself was partially responsible, and this thought kept back the words upon his lips which if spoken would have been regretted. He looked intently into her face before he answered, and the contessa's smile faded.

"Instead of replying to your question," Armstrong said, quietly, with his eyes still fixed upon her, "may I not ask you a favor?"

"Surely you may ask it," she replied; "but that does not mean that I must grant it, does it?"

"You need not grant it unless you choose," pursued Armstrong; "but at least I shall have the satisfaction of asking it: will you not add one more class into which you separate the men you meet?"

The contessa laughed merrily. "What a curious request to be made so seriously!" she exclaimed. "Of whom shall the new class be composed?"

"Of those men who are husbands and who love their wives," Armstrong replied, feelingly; "who despise intrigue and disloyalty and hypocrisy in either sex; who consider honor and life as synonyms; and who, even for the sake of civility, cannot allow misinterpretations to cast a shadow upon the sanctity of marriage."

"_Mon Dieu!_" cried the contessa, making a pretty _moue_ as she rose and moved toward the veranda; "and I thought he had no temperament! Shall I put you in this exotic class? Oh no; you would be so lonesome!"

"I could not expect you to understand," Armstrong replied, in a low tone, biting his lip with vexation.

Amelie watched his expression intently, a complete change coming over her manner. The flippant bearing was gone; the smile, aggravating as it was attractive, vanished. She took a step toward him as she spoke.

"But I do understand," she said, slowly, in a low, tense voice. "Perhaps I ought to feel shamed by your contempt and indignant at your criticism. On the contrary, I am glad that I incurred both, for by it I have learned that a man can be honest, and that appearances are not always the safest guides. What you have said is what a woman understands by instinct; anything different is what she learns--from men. Will you forgive me? I shall not offend again."

His surprise at this new and unexpected view of the contessa's character was so great that it was only instinctively that he pressed the dainty hand which was held out to him. For a moment their eyes met.

"I wish that you and your wife might both have come into my life earlier," she said, simply, and then turned quickly to the door and was in the tonneau of her motor-car before Armstrong could offer to assist her. So, as the machine moved away, he stood on the veranda, bowing his acknowledgment of her radiant smile into which a new element had entered.

Then Armstrong turned back into the hallway, where he met the doctor and Uncle Peabody coming down the stairs.

"Has she asked for me yet?" he inquired, eagerly.

"Not yet," Dr. Montgomery answered, with that understanding which is a part of the physician's profession. Armstrong turned away to conceal his face, which he felt must show all that was passing through his heart.

"I wish you would go to her, anyway," the doctor continued.

"You don't know what you are suggesting, doctor--I want to do it so much--but I must not."

"It will be necessary to talk with her soon about our future plans, Jack," Uncle Peabody said, seeing a way to accomplish their purpose. "Dr. Montgomery says that Helen is strong enough now to discuss the matter."

Armstrong looked from one to the other with uncertainty. "You are right," he said, at length. "She must be consulted about that, and I am the one to do it."

He chose the morning for his visit to her--a morning filled with the sunshine she loved so well. He plucked a handful of the fragrant blossoms from the garden, hoping that the odor might recall to her some of the happy moments they had experienced together. The very perfume rising from the redolent petals seemed to accuse him as he stood before her door awaiting the nurse's response to his knock.

"May I come in?" he asked, looking across the room to the bed where Helen lay propped up with pillows, so that she could look out of the window into the garden, even though the tops of the trees alone rewarded her gaze.

"Of course," Helen weakly replied, yet with a smile, and the nurse discreetly left them to themselves.

Armstrong seated himself on a chair near the bed and gazed in silence at the thin, pale features of the woman before him. This was the wreck of the beautiful girl he had married and brought here to Florence for her honeymoon. What a honeymoon!

"I am glad you came to me at last," Helen said, quietly, interrupting his convicting thoughts.

"At last!" The words brought him to himself. Mastering his emotion as best he could, he took her thin hand in his, and the fact that she did not withdraw it gave him courage.

"I have longed to come to you each day, but you asked me not to make it harder for you."

"I am glad you came to me at last," she repeated.

How should he begin? The sentences he had thought out carefully, which might convey his necessary message and yet spare her, seemed too cold, too meaningless. He glanced up at her helplessly, and the expression on her face helped him to his purpose. Impulsively drawing his chair still nearer to the bed, he poured out to her the self-incriminations which had haunted him for days. In a torrent of pitiless words he pictured himself without mercy. There was no plea for reconsideration, no thought of future readjustment. The one idea was to let her know how fully he realized all that had happened, how powerless he felt himself to make restitution, and his determination to do what now remained to make her future as little overcast as possible by the events which had already taken place.

"I would not have come now except that it is necessary," he said, brokenly. "I know that to see me must recall unhappy recollections, but there are some matters which we must talk over together. I have not come to plead for any reconsideration--you were right in what you said the last time we talked about it, as you have been in all else. Our marriage was a mistake, and it is I who have made it so. I no longer ask that we try to restore matters to their former position. The only sacrifice within my power is to give you a chance to recover as much as you can of what I have made you lose. The penalty is hard, but well deserved."

He did not look into her face as he spoke, lest he lose his courage before all was said. "Cerini has told you what you have taught us both, which is another debt I owe you. It should be some little consolation, dear, to know that your expression and your understanding have been so much clearer than those of this librarian, whom I have considered infallible; than those of your husband, whom in the past I know you have respected and loved. Thank God for that love!" he repeated, abruptly.

"Then it is really true that my 'dear present' is worth something, after all?"

"Your 'dear present' is the saving clause. Without it we limit ourselves beyond the hope of recovery, just as I have done. The glories of the past are as splendid and as important as I ever painted them, but they must be awakened with the breath of present necessities. You have always felt this and expressed it; I have known it only since you taught it to me."

"I am glad," she answered, simply.

"But I am forgetting my errand," Armstrong continued, bracing himself for a final effort. "As soon as you are able to travel you will, of course, wish to return home. It may be that, for the sake of appearances, you will wish me to go with you, in which case I shall make it as easy as possible for you. Or you can return with Uncle Peabody, as he tells me you once spoke to him of doing. He is eager to do anything you wish, but he has plans which need to be arranged after you have once decided."

Helen's gaze rested firmly upon her husband's half-averted face, watching the changing expressions, reading the unspoken words. "He longs for the return to him of the wife he has always loved" rang in her ears, and now for the first time it seemed to ring true. Her mind was moving fast as Armstrong ceased speaking, and even when she replied, a moment later, it was not an answer.

"What is Inez going to do?" she inquired.

"As soon as we close the villa she will go to the _pension_ where the Sinclair girls were."

"She will stay in Florence?" Helen asked, surprised.

"Yes; she has arranged with Cerini to work with him upon his _Humanistic Studies_."

Helen withdrew her hand from his as she leaned back upon the pillow and closed her eyes. Armstrong regarded her anxiously, fearful lest their interview had been too great a strain upon her returning strength; but as he looked her eyes opened again.

"You must know at once whether I prefer to return home with you or with Uncle Peabody?" she asked, faintly.

"Not at once," he replied, leaning nearer to catch the low-spoken words--"not until you are strong enough to decide."

Suddenly he felt both her arms about his neck, and in his ear she whispered, "Let me go with you, Jack; but not to Boston--take me to Fiesole!"

THE END

Transcriber's Notes

In this text-version = was used to indicate a change in font-type of a few words from _italics_ to =no-italics= (summa cum laude).

A few missing quotation marks have been added.

Archaic and inconsistent spelling and hyphenation have been preserved.

On page 193 the original text is: "Because 'beautiful paintings' do not have husbands," in the caption of the illustration the quote is: "do not possess husbands." This has been preserved.