she knew there was to be no
fighting. "What do you expect me to do, otherwise? He won't allow me
to see other men, won't talk to me himself. A little house like this
is nothing. What am I to do? It isn't even as though I'd a child."

Ruth answered very slowly. "Hugh is just a child," she said with a
great tenderness.

Helena laughed. "A child indeed? If you could have heard him this
week!" She suddenly grew hostile. "Why," she demanded passionately,
"should everything in the house hinge round _his_ career? Why am I not
to write another book? Is it because I am a woman? Mine has sold
better than all his put together and yet I'm not to do another! I'm
just to sit at home, here in this tiny room, while _he_ works and says
we've no money! No, I utterly refuse. I've got an offer and I mean to
take it."

Ruth looked troubled, feeling that she had been confident too soon.

"Helena," she said very gently, thrusting the name forward to make
peace, "I'm not going to ask you to give up your career; I'm asking you
to spare Hugh his illusions."

"I don't see," answered Helena, suspicious.

"No," said the other, and then paused. Helena thought that she had
finished, when she suddenly began again. "I've been alone a good deal
these three years, and I have thought a lot about marriage. Oh, not
for myself, no" (she spoke so sadly that Helena relented for a moment);
"but because my life now is so different from the one I spent with
Hubert, and that makes one think. You know, if I'd my life to live
again, I'd live it all alone--I'm afraid, yes, I'd sacrifice Hubert:
men are born to marry, not to live with sisters!--but I'd have my
life-work."

"And yet," swiftly interrupted Helena in triumph, "you ask me to give
up mine?"

"I don't." She spoke decisively. "I only ask you not to sacrifice
Hubert's to it."

"I still don't understand." Her voice was almost resentful.

"Hubert married you," began Ruth expansively, "because he is the sort
of man who needs encouragement. He wanted some one who'd think his
work wonderful and ask him how he did it. You surely see the
difference? Imagine his life now, for any one like him: your bigger
sales, your long reviews, your photographs, his own eclipse. It is
impossible."

Helena remembered the press-notice and spoke more obediently. "What
are you asking me to do then?"

"Leave him." The words dropped out like heavy weights.

"Leave him?" cried Helena, and by