HEART-BURNING HEAT OF DUTY.
Love's Labor's Lost; i.—I.

That evening Helen too sat at home, alone and full of resistless thoughts.

She had put the finishing touches to the Flight of the Months, completing the work with scarcely less success than at first, and in three days she was to sail for Europe. She had not allowed Dr. Ashton's death to interrupt her work, the necessity of avoiding unpleasant gossip which would be provoked by the disclosure of her relations with the dead man, being sufficient reason why she should not change her outward life. She quietly and rapidly completed the preparations for departure, and already the feeling of severance from familiar scenes cast its sadness over her.

Leaving the studio to-day, she had gone down to speak with Herman, whom she wished to take the responsibility of the firing of the bas-relief. When she had finished this errand she turned to a figure in terra-cotta whose freshness showed that it had but recently come from the kiln.

"What is this?" she asked. "I have never seen it."

"It is a Pasht," the sculptor returned. "I modeled it as a wedding present for Arthur Fenton, but luckily I did not get it done in time."

"Why 'luckily?'"

"Because I should be sorry to have given him any thing so closely connected with the Pagans, as things have turned out."

Helen did not need to ask explanations of these words, although she did not know how complete the breach between Fenton and his former friends had become.

"I am glad I am going away," she exclaimed with a sigh.

"Going away?" he echoed, dropping his modeling tools.

"Yes, I sail Saturday."

She spoke with perfect composure, yet her glance was averted. She was painfully conscious of having concealed the fact from him until this moment.

He came towards her, his eyes fixed upon her face.

"What does this mean?" he demanded, almost fiercely. "Why do you go?"

"I mean to study in Rome," she replied faintly. "I always told you that
I hoped to go some day."

"But why do you go now? Why have you concealed it from me? Are you afraid of my—of my love? If any one must go it should be I; I have no right to drive you away."

"You are not driving me away; I—it is better that I should go."

"But why go now? Now you are free, and I have a right to claim you."

"No," Helen said in a voice suddenly firm, but which yet showed her inward agitation, "no; there is Ninitta. I have suffered too much myself to be willing to try to come to happiness over any woman's heart. It is better that I should go."

"Ninitta!" Herman burst out. "She has no claim; she will not even care; she—"

"No," interrupted Helen, laying her hand upon his arm. "You cannot say that; you know it is not true. You can see as well as I that Ninitta is pining her life out over your neglect. We are not free to break her heart when you yourself taught her to love."

"I have never been unkind to her," he said, a little defiantly; "except perhaps when she acted like a mad woman and broke your figures."

"In love," returned Helen, smiling faintly, and glad to take refuge in generalities, "sins of commission, as compared with the deadly sin of omission, are mere venial offenses. It is not what you have done, but what you have left undone."

"But what can I do? I cannot force myself to love her?"

"You have made her love you."

"But I outgrew her centuries ago."

"The price of growth is always to outgrow," replied Helen.

She was struggling hard to keep the conversation away from dangerous levels. She felt that she must seem heartless, but none the less she went on bravely.

"And after all what is outgrowing? It is a question of moods, of—"

But her courage failed her. Her voice trembled, she turned away from him and walked down the studio, stopping here and there as if to examine a cast or a figure, invisible through the tears which welled up in her eyes. The sculptor followed close behind her, until she put her hand upon the great Oran rug which hung before the door.

"Then you leave me," he broke out bitterly. "You make Ninitta a pretext for escaping me. You might have told me that you did not care for me. I would not have molested you."

She turned to him suddenly, and he was startled by the whiteness of her face, for she was pale to the very lips.

"Do you think it is easy for me to go," she cried passionately, "to give you up when I love you! You should help me, not make it harder. Isn't it better to part now while we have nothing to regret than to live with a wrong between us?"

"But what wrong will be between us? Surely that boyish mistake need not blight both our lives."

"Can we help it?" she asked sadly.

"We will help it! Are we merely puppets then, to be bandied about helplessly? I told her I loved her; it is no longer true, and why is the pledge that followed binding?"

"It is not simply that you gave her your word," Helen returned, struggling bravely with herself; "it is that you made her love you, and that obligation you can never shake off. Oh, it is because you are too noble to take a woman's love and then trample upon it, that I love you—that you fill my heart."

She poured out the words, her eyes blazing, her splendid form dilated, her arms involuntarily extended towards him. He took her into his embrace; not hastily, not wildly; but with a slow, irresistible movement that had in it something of solemnity. He showered kisses upon her hair, her forehead, her lips; he pressed her to his bosom as if he would absorb her into himself.

"My darling, my darling," he said, in a hoarse, fiery whisper, "I cannot give you up! Think how lonely I am; how I love you!"

She put up her face and kissed him with a long, clinging kiss; then she freed herself from his arms. They stood face to face, her eyes appealing, until his glance fell before hers.

"Yes," he said in a voice so low that she bent forward to listen, "yes; you must be right."

"I am right," she responded sadly, "I have fought against it too much not to be sure of that."

"It is an odd way of proving my love for you to give you up," continued Herman, with a new accent of bitterness in his voice. "Oh, the folly of that boyish passion!"

He strode away from her, as she leaned panting against a modeling stand. The darkness was gathering so rapidly that when he turned back his face came out of the gloom like a surprise.

"My reward," he said, "must be that you love me; but that very reward makes it harder to deserve it. I am sure that we would be wiser and happier if we had no scruples to hamper us."

"But we have," was her response; "to take your own words, we are not mere puppets."

Again he walked away from her, and for a few moments there was no sound but that of his heavy footsteps, which seemed to make the silence more solemn and penetrating.

"I will do whatever you ask," he burst out suddenly. "I will even marry her if you wish."

"I ask nothing. It is not I but your convictions you should follow. I am not even able to advise. Your own instincts are better and nobler than any thing I can say to you." She stopped and choked back a sob. "Oh, Grant, it is so hard!" she cried.

She had never used that name before, and it so thrilled him with joy and pain that he made an impulsive movement as if once more to take her in his arms; but she lifted her hand with a gesture of negation.

"I have been tempted as well as you," she continued, "I have said to myself a thousand times that love justified all, and that these theories were too fine spun. I could not keep the thought of you down even when I first knew I was a widow, and I said over and over to myself that now no one stood between us. I knew it was no use, but I lay awake in the night and tried to prove to myself that Ninitta had no claim,—but, oh! you are too much to me for me to be willing that you should do what we both know is wrong and cruel. I can endure anything better than that you should not always be my ideal; and I should hate myself if I tempted you to wrong."

"What I am," he said brokenly, moved most of all by the tears upon her cheeks, "is nothing. You have beaten this temptation, not I; I would have done any thing if you had encouraged me. I am a very ordinary mortal, Helen, when one really knows my littleness."

She smiled through her tears at him.

"You shall not abuse yourself;" she replied. "I will not have it."

There was not much further said between them. They remained together until the dusk filled the studio, and it looked again like a ghost-world as on the morning they two had come into it to see the dead form modeled in red clay. Perhaps it was upon this remembrance that at length Mrs. Greyson said:

"Will you give me, before I go to Europe, that figure you showed me?"

"I will give you any thing you ask," he answered; "I wish I might add myself. Is it right," he added, with sudden fire, "for me to tie myself to that model girl? Am I worth nothing better than that?"

"You are worth the best woman on earth; but—oh I cannot argue it, but I feel it; I am sure that it cannot be right to deny the claim which you yourself gave her, Grant. I know by myself what it would be to lose you."

"But she is not the woman you are. Her feelings are those of an ignorant peasant; she—"

Helen laid her fingers lightly upon his lips.

"No," she said, "don't go on. We have said it all once. You are trying to out-argue your own convictions. I must go now. It is almost dark already."

She took a step or two towards the door and again laid her hand upon the rug portiÊre. Then as by a common impulse they turned towards each other, and once more she was locked in his embrace.

And to-night, sitting alone in the dark, with dilated eyes, Helen felt still the ecstasy of that moment, but murmured to herself:

"It must not be again; I will not see him alone."