."

"Then there's nothing to be done. I dare say you are right. Let them
marry. There remains the question of compensation."

"Do you want me to adjudicate that too? Had you not better consult an
expert?"

"This part is in confidence," said Helen. "It has nothing to do with
Meg, and do not mention it to her. The compensation--I do not see who is
to pay it if I don't, and I have already decided on the minimum sum.
As soon as possible I am placing it to your account, and when I am in
Germany you will pay it over for me. I shall never forget your kindness,
Tibbikins, if you do this."

"What is the sum?"

"Five thousand."

"Good God alive!" said Tibby, and went crimson.

"Now, what is the good of driblets? To go through life having done one
thing--to have raised one person from the abyss; not these puny gifts of
shillings and blankets--making the grey more grey. No doubt people will
think me extraordinary."

"I don't care an iota what people think!" cried he, heated to unusual
manliness of diction. "But it's half what you have."

"Not nearly half." She spread out her hands over her soiled skirt. "I
have far too much, and we settled at Chelsea last spring that three
hundred a year is necessary to set a man on his feet. What I give will
bring in a hundred and fifty between two. It isn't enough." He could not
recover. He was not angry or even shocked, and he saw that Helen would
still have plenty to live on. But it amazed him to think what haycocks
people can make of their lives. His delicate intonations would not work,
and he could only blurt out that the five thousand pounds would mean a
great deal of bother for him personally.

"I didn't expect you to understand me."

"I? I understand nobody."

"But you'll do it?"

"Apparently."

"I leave you two commissions, then. The first concerns Mr. Wilcox, and
you are to use your discretion. The second concerns the money, and is
to be mentioned to no one, and carried out literally. You will send a
hundred pounds on account to-morrow."

He walked with her to the station, passing through those streets whose
serried beauty never bewildered him and never fatigued. The lovely
creature raised domes and spires into the cloudless blue, and only
the ganglion of vulgarity round Carfax showed how evanescent was the
phantom, how faint its claim to represent England. Helen, rehearsing her
commission, noticed nothing; the Basts were in her brain, and she retold
the crisis in a