She drove back to her hotel. She felt very tired. The world she gazed at seemed vast and alien, a world in which she had no place. The truth had come to her and she looked at it curiously, almost indifferently. London flowed past her, long tides of purpose to right and left. The trees in Green Park were softly blurred on the chill, white sky. She looked at the trees and sky and at the far lift of Piccadilly, blackened with traffic, and, at the faces that went by, as if it were all a vast cinematograph and she the idlest of spectators. And it was here that love had first come to her, and here that despair had come. Now both were over and she accepted her defeat.

She thought, when the hotel was reached, and as she went upstairs, that she would go to bed and try to sleep. But when she entered her little sitting-room she found Franklin there waiting for her. He had been reading the newspapers before the fire and had risen quickly on hearing her step. It was as if she had forgotten Franklin all this time.

She stood by the door that she had closed, and gazed at him. It was without will, or hope, or feeling that she gazed, as if he were a part only of that alien world she had looked at, and this outward seeing was relentless. A meagre, commonplace, almost comic little man. She saw behind him his trite and colourless antecedents; she saw before him—and her—the future, trite and colourless too, but for the extraneous glitter of the millions that surrounded him as incongruously as a halo would have done. He was an angel, of course; he was good; but he was only that; there were no varieties, no graces, no mysteries. His very interests were as meagre as his personality; he had hardly a taste, except the taste for doing his best. Books, music, pictures—all the great world of beauty and intellect that the world of goodness and workaday virtues existed, perhaps, only to make possible—its finer, more ethereal superstructure—only counted for Franklin as recreations, relaxations, things half humorously accepted as one accepts a glass of lemonade on a hot day. Not only was he without charm, but he was unaware of charm; he didn't see it or feel it or need it. And she, who had seen and felt, she who had known Gerald and Helen, must be satisfied with this. It was this that she must strive to be worthy of. She was unworthy, and she knew it; but that acceptation was only part of the horror of defeat. And the soulless gaze with which she looked at him oddly chiselled her pallid face. She was like a dumb, classic mask, too impersonal for tragedy. Her lips were parted in their speechlessness and her eyes vacant of thought.

Then, after that soulless seeing, she realised that she had frightened Franklin. He came to her. 'Dear—what is the matter?' he asked.

He came so near that she looked into his eyes. She looked deeply, for a long time, in silence. And while she looked, while Franklin's hands gently found and held hers, life came to her with dreadful pain again. She felt, rather than knew—and with a long shudder—that the world was vast; she felt and feared it as vast and alien. She felt that she was alone, and the loneliness was a terror, beating upon her. And she felt—no longer seeing anything but the deeps of Franklin's eyes—that he was her only refuge; and closing her own eyes she stumbled towards him and he received her in his arms.

They sat on the sofa, and Franklin clasped her while she wept, and she seemed to re-enter childhood where all that she wanted was to cry her heart out and have gentle arms around her while she confessed every wrong-doing that had made a barrier between herself and her mother's heart. 'O Franklin,' she sobbed, 'I'm so unhappy!'

He said nothing, soothing her as a mother might have done.

'Franklin, I loved him!' she sobbed. 'It was real: it was the reallest thing that ever happened to me. I only sent for you because I knew that he didn't love me. I loved him too much to go on if he didn't love me. What I have suffered, Franklin. And now he is going to marry Helen. He loves Helen. And I am not worthy of you.'

'Poor child,' said Franklin. He pressed his lips to her hair.

'You know, Franklin?'

'Yes, I know, dear.'

'I am not worthy of you,' Althea repeated. 'I have been weak and selfish. I've used you—to hide from myself—because I was too frightened to stand alone and give up things.'

'Well, you shan't stand alone any more,' said Franklin.

'But, Franklin—dear—kind Franklin—why should you marry me? I don't love you—not as I loved him. I only wanted you because I was afraid. I must tell you all the truth. I only want you now, and cling to you like this, because I am afraid, because I can't go on alone and have nothing to live for.'

'You'll have me now, dear,' said Franklin. 'You'll try that, won't you, and perhaps you'll find it more worth while than you think.'

Something more now than fear and loneliness and penitence was piercing her. His voice: poor Franklin's voice. What had she done to him? What had they all done to him among them? And dimly, like the memory of a dream, yet sharply, too, as such memory may be sharp, there drifted for Althea the formless fear that hovered—formless yet urgent—when Franklin had come to her in her desperate need. It hovered, and it seemed to shape itself, as if through delicate curves of smoke, into Helen's face—Helen's eyes and smile. Helen, charm embodied; Helen, all the things that Franklin could never be; all the things she had believed till now, Franklin could never feel or need. What did she know of Franklin? so the fear whispered softly. What had Helen done to Franklin? What had it meant to Franklin, that strange mingling with magic?

She could never ask. She could never know. It would hover and whisper always, the fear that had yet its beauty. It humbled her and it lifted Franklin. He was more than she had believed. She had believed him all hers, to take; but it was he who had given himself to her, and there was an inmost shrine—ah, was there not?—that was not his to give. And pity, deep pity, and sadness immeasurable for a loss not hers alone, was in her as she sobbed: 'Ah, it is only because you are sorry for me. I have killed all the rest. You are not in love with me any longer—poor—poor Franklin—and everything is spoiled.'

But Franklin could show her that he had seen the fear, and yet that life was not spoiled by shrines in each heart from which the other was shut out. It was difficult to know how to say it; difficult to tell her that some truth she saw and yet that there was more truth for them both—plenty of truth, as he would have said, for them both to live on. And though it took him a little while to find the words, he did find them at last, completely, for her and for himself, saying gently, while he held her, 'No, it isn't, dear. It's not spoiled. It's not the same—for either of us—is it?—but it isn't spoiled. We've taken nothing from each other; some things weren't ours, that's all. And even if you don't much want to marry me, you must please have me, now; because I want to marry you. I want to live for you so much that by degrees, I feel sure of it, you'll want to live for me, too. We must live for each other; we've got each other. Isn't that enough, Althea?'

'Is it—is it enough?' she sobbed.

'I guess it is,' said Franklin.

His voice was sane and sweet, even if it was sad. It seemed the voice of life. Althea closed her eyes and let it fold her round. Only with Franklin could she find consolation in her defeat, or strength to live without the happiness that had failed her. Only Franklin could console her for having to take Franklin. Was that really all that it came to? No, she felt it growing, as they sat in silence, her sobs quieting, her head on his shoulder; it came to more. But she saw nothing clearly after the hateful, soulless seeing. The only clear thing was that it was good to be with Franklin.

THE END.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN.

ESTABLISHED 1798

T. NELSON AND SONS
PRINTERS AND PUBLISHERS

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