and said all those things that
were in her heart, that now she knew were true, might she not hold him
to her against his will? The love that once he had for her might no
longer exist, and if, in her turn, she told him she loved him and had
always loved him, might he not in some mistaken spirit of chivalry feel
it was his duty to pretend to care? Her cheeks burned at the thought. It
was intolerable. She could not write that letter. And as day succeeded
day, to do so became more difficult. And so she never wrote and was very
unhappy. And Latimer was very unhappy. But he had his work, and Helen
had none, and for her life became a game of putting little things
together, like a picture puzzle, an hour here and an hour there, to make
up each day. It was a dreary game.

From time to time she heard of him through the newspapers. For, in his
own State, he was an "Insurgent" making a fight, the outcome of which
was expected to show what might follow throughout the entire West.
When he won his fight much more was written about him, and he became
a national figure. In his own State the people hailed him as the next
governor, promised him a seat in the Senate. To Helen this seemed to
take him further out of her life. She wondered if now she held a place
even in his thoughts.

At Fair Harbor the two hundred and forty-nine used to joke with her
about her politician. Then they considered Latimer of importance only
because Helen liked him. Now they discussed him impersonally and over
her head, as though she were not present, as a power, an influence,
as the leader and exponent of a new idea. They seemed to think she
no longer could pretend to any peculiar claim upon him, that now he
belonged to all of them.

Older men would say to her: "I hear you know Latimer? What sort of a man
is he?"

Helen would not know what to tell them. She could not say he was a man
who sat with his back to a pine-tree, reading from a book of verse, or
halting to devour her with humble, entreating eyes.

She went South for the winter, the doctors deciding she was run down
and needed the change. And with an unhappy laugh at her own expense she
agreed in their diagnosis. She was indifferent as to where they sent
her, for she knew wherever she went she must still force herself to
go on putting one hour on top of another, until she had built up the
inexorable and necessary twenty-four.

When she returned winter was departing, but reluctantly, and returning