It was Althea who, during the next few days, while Gerald with the greatest tact and composure made his approaches, was most unconscious of what was approaching her. Everybody else now saw quite clearly what Gerald's intentions were. Althea was dazed; she did not know what the bright object that had come so overpoweringly into her life wanted of her. She had feared—sickeningly—with a stiffening of her whole nature to resistance, that he wanted to flirt with her as well as with Lady Pickering. Then she had seen that he wasn't going to flirt, that he was going to be her friend, and then—this in the two or three days that followed Gerald's talk with Helen—that he was going to be a dear one. She had only adjusted her mind to this grave joy and wondered, with all the perplexity of her own now recognised love, whether it could prove more than a very tremulous joy, when the final revelation came upon her. It came, and it was still unexpected, one afternoon when she and Gerald sat in the drawing-room together. It was very warm, and they had come into the cooler house after tea to look at a book that Gerald wanted to show her. It had proved to be not much of a book after all, and even while standing with him in the library, while he turned the musty leaves for her and pointed out the funny old illustrations he had been telling her of, Althea had felt that the book was only a pretext for getting her away to himself. He had led her back to the drawing-room and he had said, 'Don't let's go out again, it's much nicer here. Please sit here and talk to me.'

It was just the hour, just such an afternoon as that on which poor Franklin had arrived; Althea thought of that as she and Gerald sat down on the same little sofa where she and Franklin had sat. And, in a swift flash of association, she remembered that Franklin had wanted to kiss her, and had kissed her. They had left Franklin under the limes with Helen; he had been reading something to Helen out of a pamphlet, and Helen had looked, though rather sleepy, kindly acquiescent; but the memory of the past could do no more than stir a faint pity for the present Franklin; she was wishing—and it seemed the most irresistible longing of all her life—that Gerald Digby wanted to kiss her too. The memory and the wish threw her thoughts into confusion, but she was still able to maintain her calm, to smile at him and say, 'Certainly, let us talk.'

'But not about politics and philanthropy to-day,' said Gerald, who leaned his elbow on his knee and looked quietly yet intently at her; 'I want to talk about ourselves, if I may.'

'Do let us talk about ourselves,' said Althea.

'Well, I don't believe that what I'm going to say will surprise you. I'm sure you've seen how much I've come to care about you,' said Gerald.

Althea kept her eyes fixed calmly upon him; her self-command was great, even in the midst of an overpowering hope.

'I know that we are real friends,' she returned, smiling.

Her calm, her cool, sweet smile, like the light in the shaded room, were very pleasing to Gerald. 'Ah, yes, but that was only a step, you see,' he smiled back. He did not let her guess his full confidence, he took all the steps one after the other in their proper order. He couldn't give her romance, but he could give her every grace, and her calm made him feel, happily and securely, that grace would quite content her.

'You must see,' he went on, still with his eyes on hers, 'that it's more than that. You must see that you are dearer than that.' And then he brought out his simple question, 'Will you be my wife?'

Althea sat still and her mind whirled. Until then she had been unprepared. Her own feeling, the feeling that she had refused for days to look at, had been so strong that she had only known its strength and its danger to her pride; she had had no time to wonder about Gerald's feeling. And now, in its freedom, her feeling was so joyous that she could know only its joy. She was dear to him. He asked her to marry him. It seemed enough, more than enough, to make joy a permanent thing in her life. She had not imagined it possible to marry a man who did not woo and urge, who did not make her feel the ardour of his love. But, now, breathlessly, she found that reality was quite different from her imagination and yet so blissful that she could feel nothing wanting in it. And she could say nothing. She looked at him with her large eyes, gravely, and touched, a little abashed by their gaze, he took her hand, kissed it, and murmured, 'Please say you'll have me.'

'Do you love me?' Althea breathed out; it was not that she questioned or hesitated; the words came to her lips in answer to the situation rather than in questioning of him. And it was hardly a shock; it was, in a subtle way, a further realisation of exquisiteness, when the situation, in his reply, defined itself as a reality still further removed from her imagination of what such a situation should be.

Holding her hand, his gay brown eyes upon her, he said, after only the very slightest pause, 'Miss Jakes, I'm not a romantic person, you see that; you see the sort of person I am. I can't make pretty speeches, not when I'm serious, as I am now. When I make pretty speeches, I'm only flirting. I like you. I respect you. I've watched you here in my old home and I've thought, "If only she would make it home again." I've thought that you'd help me to make a new life. I want to come and live here, with you, and do the things I told you about—the things that needed money.'

His eyes were on hers, so quietly and so gravely, now, that they seemed to hold from her all ugly little interpretations; he trusted her with the true one, he trusted her not to see it as ugly. 'You see, I'm not romantic,' he went on, 'and I can only tell you the truth. I couldn't have thought of marrying you if you hadn't had money, but I needn't tell you that, if you'd had millions, I wouldn't have thought of marrying you unless I cared for you. So there it is, quite clear and simple. I think I can make you happy; will you make me happy?'

It was exquisite, the trust, the truth, the quiet gravity, and yet there was pain in the exquisiteness. She could not look at it yet distinctly for it seemed part of the beauty. It was rarer, more dignified, this wooing, than commonplace protestations of devotion. It was a large and beautiful life he opened to her and he needed her to make it real. They needed each other. Yet—here the pain hovered—they needed each other so differently. To her, he was the large and beautiful life; to him, she was only a part of it, and a means to it. But she could not look at pain. Pride was mounting in her, pride in him, her beloved and her possession. Before all the world, henceforth, he would be hers. And the greatness of that pride cast out lesser ones. He had discriminated, been carefully sincere; her sincerity did not need to be careful, it was an unqualified gift she had to make him. 'I love you,' she said. 'I will make it your home.'

And again Gerald was touched and a little confused. He kissed her hand and then, her eyes of mute avowal drawing him, he leaned to her and kissed her cheek. He felt it difficult to answer such a speech, and all that he found to say at last was, 'You will make me romantic, dear Althea.'

That evening he sought Helen out again; but he need not have come with his news, for it was none. Althea's blissful preoccupation and his gaiety had all the evening proclaimed the happy event. But he had to talk to Helen, and finding her on the terrace, he drew her hand through his arm and paced to and fro with her. She was silent, and, suddenly and oddly, he found it difficult to say anything. 'Well,' he ventured at last.

'Well,' Helen echoed in the darkness.

'It's all settled,' said Gerald.

'Yes,' said Helen.

'And I'm very happy.'

'I am so glad.'

'And she is really a great dear. Anything more generously sweet I've never encountered.'

'I'm so glad,' Helen repeated.

There seemed little more to say, but, before they went in, he squeezed her hand and added: 'If it hadn't been for you, I'd never have met her. Dear Helen, I have to thank you for my good fortune. I've always had to thank you for the nice things that have happened to me.'

But to this Helen demurred, though smiling apparently, as she answered, going in, 'Oh no, I don't think you have this to thank me for.'

After they had gone upstairs, Althea came to Helen's room, and putting her arms around her she hid her face on her shoulder. She was too happy to feel any sense of shyness. It was Helen who was shy. So shy that the tears rose to her eyes as she stood there, embraced. And, strangely, she felt, with all her disquiet at being so held by Althea, that the tears were not only for shyness, but for her friend. Althea's happiness touched her. It seemed greater than her situation warranted. Helen could not see the situation as rapturous. It was not such a tempered, such a reasonable joy that she could have accepted, had it been her part to accept or to decline. And, held by Althea, hot, shrinking, sorry, she was aware of another anger against Gerald.

'My dear Althea, I know. I do so heartily congratulate you and Gerald,' she said.

'He told you, dear Helen?'

'Yes, he told me, but of course I saw.'

'I feel now as if you were my sister,' said Althea, tightening her arms. 'We will always be very near each other, Helen. It is so beautiful to think that you brought us together, isn't it?'

Helen was forced to put the distasteful cup to her lips. 'Yes indeed,' she said.

'He is so dear, so wonderful,' said Althea. 'There is so much more in him than he knows himself. I want him to be a great man, Helen. I believe he can be, don't you?'

'I've never thought of Gerald as great,' Helen replied, trying to smile.

'Ah, well, wait; you will see! I suppose it is only a woman in love with a man who sees all his capacities. We will live here, and in London.' Althea, while she spoke her guileless assurance, raised her head and threw back her unbound hair, looking her full trust into Helen's eyes. 'I wouldn't care to live for more than half the year in the country, and it wouldn't be good for Gerald. I want to do so much, Helen, to make so many people happy, if I can. And, Helen dear,' she smiled now through her tears, 'if only you could be one of them; if only this could mean in some way a new opening in your life, too. One can never tell; happiness is such an infectious thing; if you are a great deal with two very happy people, you may catch the habit. I can't bear to think that you aren't happy, rare and lovely person that you are. I told Gerald so to-day. I said to him that I felt life hadn't given you any of the joy we all so need. Helen, dear, you must find your fairy-prince. You must, you shall fall in love, too.'

Helen controlled her face and gulped on. 'That's not so easily managed,' she remarked. 'I've seen a good many fairy-princes in my life, and either I haven't melted their hearts, or they haven't melted mine. We can't all draw lucky numbers, you know; there are not enough to go round.'

'As if anybody wouldn't fall in love with you, if you gave them the chance,' said Althea. 'You are the lucky number.'

Althea felt next day a certain tameness in the public reception of her news. She had not intended the news to be public yet for some time. Franklin's presence seemed to make an announcement something of an indelicacy, but, whether through her responsibility or whether through Gerald's, or whether through the obviousness of the situation, she found that everybody knew. It could not make commonplace to her her own inner joy, but she saw that to Aunt Julia, to the girls, to Lady Pickering, and Sir Charles, her position was commonplace. She was, to them, a nice American who was being married as much because she had money as because she was nice.

Aunt Julia voiced this aspect to her on the first opportunity, drawing her away after breakfast to walk with her along the terrace while she said, very gravely, 'Althea, dear, do you really think you'll be happy living in England?'

'Happier than anywhere else in the world,' said Althea.

'I didn't realise that you felt so completely expatriated.'

'England has always seemed very homelike to me, and this already is more of a home to me than any I have known for years,' said Althea, looking up at Merriston House.

'Poor child!' said Aunt Julia, 'what a comment on your rootless life. You must forgive me, Althea,' she went on in a lower voice, 'but I feel myself in a mother's place to you, and I do very much want to ask you to consider more carefully before you make things final. Mr. Digby is a charming man; but how little you have seen of him. I beg you to wait for a year before you marry.'

'I'm afraid I can't gratify you, Aunt Julia. I certainly can't ask Gerald to wait for a year.'

'My dear, why not!' Aunt Julia did not repress.

Althea went on calmly. 'It is true, of course, that we are not in love like two children, with no thought of responsibility or larger claims. You see, one outgrows that rather naÏve American idea about marriage. Mine is, if you like, a mariage de convenance, in the sense that Gerald is a poor man and cannot marry unless he marries money. And I am proud to have the power to help him to build up a large and dignified life, and we don't intend to postpone our marriage when we know, trust, and love each other as we do.'

'A large life, my dear,' said Aunt Julia. 'Don't deceive yourself into thinking that. One needs a far larger fortune than your tiny one, nowadays, if one is to build up a large life. What I fear more than anything is that you don't in the least realise what English country life is all the year round. Imagine, if you can, your winters here.'

'I shan't spend many winters here,' said Althea smiling. She did not divulge her vague, bright plans to Aunt Julia, but they filled the future for her; she saw the London drawing-room where, when Gerald was in Parliament, she would gather delightful people together. Among such people, Lady Blair, Miss Buckston, her friends in Devonshire, and of Grimshaw Rectory, seemed hardly more than onlookers; they did not fit into the pictures of her new life.

And if they did not fit, what of Franklin? Even in old unsophisticated pictures of a salon he had been a figure adjusted with some difficulty. It had, in days that seemed immeasurably remote—days when she had wondered whether she could marry Franklin—it had been difficult to see herself introducing him with any sense of achievement to Lady Blair or to the Collings, and she knew now, clearly, why: in Lady Blair's drawing-room, as in Devonshire and at Grimshaw Rectory, Franklin would have looked a funny little man. How much more funny in the new setting. What would he do in it? What was it to mean to him? What would any setting mean to Franklin in which he was to see her as no longer needing him? For, and this was the worst of it, and in spite of happiness Althea felt it as a pang indeed, she no longer needed Franklin; and knowing this she longed at once to avoid and to atone to him.

She found him after her walk with Aunt Julia sitting behind a newspaper in the library. Franklin always read the newspapers every morning, and it struck Althea as particularly touching that this good habit should be persevered in under his present circumstances. She was so much touched by Franklin, the habit of old intimacy was so strong, that her own essential change of heart seemed effaced by the uprising of feeling for him. 'O Franklin!' she said. He had risen as she entered, and he stood looking at her with a smile. It seemed to receive her, to forgive, to understand. Almost weeping, she went to him with outstretched hands, faltering, 'I am so happy, and I am so sorry, dear Franklin. Oh, forgive me if I have hurt your life.'

He looked at her, no longer smiling, very gravely, holding her hands, and she knew that he was not thinking of his life, but of hers. And, with a further pang, she remembered that the last time they had stood so—she and Franklin—she had given him more hope for his life than ever before in all their histories. He must remember, too, and he must feel her unworthy in remembering, and even though she did not need Franklin, she could not bear him to think her unworthy. 'Forgive me,' she repeated. And the tears rose to her eyes. 'I've been so tossed, so unstable. I haven't known. I only know now, you see, dear Franklin. I've really fallen in love at last. Can you ever forgive me?'

'For not having fallen in love with me?' he asked gently.

'No, dear,' she answered, forced into complete sincerity. What was it in Franklin that compelled sincerity, and made it so easy to be sincere? There, at least, was a quality for which one would always need him. 'No, not for that, but for having thought that I might, perhaps, fall in love with you. It is the hope I gave you that must make this seem so sudden and so cruel.'

He had not felt her cruel, but he had felt something that was now giving his eyes their melancholy directness of gaze. He was looking at his Althea; he was not judging her; but he was wishing that she had been able to think of him a little more as mere friend, a little more as the man who, after all, had loved her all these years; wishing that she had not so completely forgotten him, so completely relegated and put him away when her new life was coming to her. But he understood, he did not judge, and he answered, 'I don't think you've been cruel, Althea dear, though it's been rather cruel of fortune, if you like, to arrange it in just this way. As for hurting my life, you've been the most beautiful thing in it.'

Something in his voice, final acceptance, final resignation, as though, seeing her go for ever, he bowed his head in silence, filled her with intolerable sadness. Was it that she wanted still to need him, or was it that she could not bear the thought that he might, some day, no longer need her?

The sense of an end of things, chill and penetrating like an autumnal wind, made all life seem bleak and grey for the moment. 'But, Franklin, you will always be my friend. That is not changed,' she said. 'Please tell me that nothing of that side of things is changed, dear Franklin.'

And now that sincerity in him, that truth-seeing and truth-speaking quality that was his power, became suddenly direful. For though he looked at her ever so gently and ever so tenderly, his eyes pierced her. And, helplessly, he placed the truth before them both, saying: 'I'll always be your friend, of course, dear Althea. You'll always be the most beautiful thing I've had in my life; but what can I be in yours? I don't belong over here, you know. I'll not be in your life any longer. How can it not be changed? How will you stay my friend, dear Althea?'

The tears rolled down her cheeks. That he should see, and accept, and still love her, made him seem dearer than ever before, while, in her heart, she knew that he spoke the truth. 'Don't—don't, dear Franklin,' she pleaded. 'You will be often with us. Don't talk as if it were at an end. How could our friendship have an end? Don't let me think that you are leaving me.'

He smiled a little, but it was a valorous smile. 'I'll never leave you in that way.'

'Don't speak, then, as if I were leaving you.'

But Franklin, though he smiled the valorous smile, couldn't give her a consolation not his to give. Did he see clearly, and for the first time, that he had always counted for her as a solace, a substitute for the things he couldn't be, and that now, when these things had come to her, he counted really for nothing at all? If he did see it, he didn't resent it; he would understand that, too, even though it left him with no foothold in her life. But he couldn't pretend—to give her comfort—that she needed him any longer. 'I want to count for anything you'll let me count for,' he said; 'but—it isn't your fault, dear—I don't think I will ever count for much, now; I don't see how I can. If that's being left, I guess I am left.'

She gazed at him, and all that she had to offer was her longing that the truth were not the truth, and for the moment of silent confrontation her pain was so great that its pressure brought an involuntary cry—protest or presage—it felt like both. 'You will—you will count—for much more, dear Franklin.'

She didn't know that it was the truth; his seemed to be the final truth; but it came, and it had to be said, and he could accept it as her confession and her atonement.