a natural dramatic instinct she rose
from her chair. "Leave him when I'm fond of him?"

Ruth looked very earnest. "Leave him," she said again, "unless you're
fond enough of him to give up your career. I tell you--I _know_--you
can not have both, with Hubert."

"You cannot serve God and Mammon," murmured Helena. She did not know
that she had said it. She sank down into her chair again and forced
her numb brain to thought.

"Don't break all his illusions," she heard Ruth saying, miles away.
"Be gentle with him if you're fond of him. You know how sensitive he
is. Your books, you say, sell better. How do you think he could ever
endure that, he who--I tell you--is nothing but a child? It would be
agony, a life-time agony; disgrace. He lives upon success, on
admiration, on being the centre even of a little house. How could a
man like that endure to be just Helena Brett's husband? ... Oh no, you
won't do it, you can't be so brutal. No one can forbid you your
career, but go away and work it out alone. _I_ will look after Hubert,
if he needs me."

That struck home, among these words that came dully to Helena through
the chaos of her thought. "So that's it," she said with a bitter
laugh, longing to hurt somehow. "You're thinking of yourself."

"God knows," said Ruth solemnly, "I wouldn't come back willingly for
half the world, fond as I am of Hugh. I've _lived_ since I got right
away alone beside the sea. He always trampled on me; I lay down; I
haven't got your courage. I often cried myself to sleep--and he not
even guessing he had been unkind! It was hideous, I see now; hideous
every day of it. But I'd go through it all again, and worse, sooner
than expose him to this agony."

There was conviction in her tones. Helena tried to arouse herself.
"Leave him?" she said dully. "Surely there's some other way? Even if
he didn't mind, think of---- You talk about agony, but how can you
advise me to do this, when you know how his friends----"

"Nothing would hurt him," said Ruth earnestly, "nothing in all the
world--that is the awful part--so much as this blow to his pride, this
shattering of all his life-work. He thinks--he told me so--he thinks
this book of yours was just a fluke, an amateur attempt; that you can
never do another. Oh, don't you see?" (she cried impatiently): "Must I
put it in words? He thinks that _he_ is a real author, you just
nobody; that _he_ has studied, he has nerves and everythi