rstand him.

Mr. Dale walked home with her, but he did not speak to her again of her
sorrow. The impulse had been given, and her conscience aroused; the
harder struggle of coming back to the daily life of others she must meet
alone. And she met it bravely. Little by little she tried to see the
interests and small concerns of people about her, and very gradually the
heavy atmosphere of the rectory began to lighten. Dr. Howe scarcely knew
how it was that there was a whist party in his library one Friday
evening; rather a silent one, with a few sighs from the Misses Woodhouse
and a suspicious dimness in Mr. Dale's eyes. The rector somehow slipped
into the vacant chair; he said he thought he was so old whist would not
hurt him, if they were willing to teach him. But as he swept the board
at the first deal, and criticised his partner's lead at the second,
instruction was deemed superfluous.

By degrees, Lois and Helen came nearer together. There was no
explanation: the differences had been too subtile for words, at least on
Lois's side, and to have attempted it would have made a vague impression
harden into permanence.

No one recognized an effort on Helen's part, and she only knew it
herself when she realized that it was a relief to be with Mr. Dale. He
understood; she could be silent with him. So she came very often to his
little basement office, and spent long mornings with him, helping him
label some books, or copying notes which he had intended "getting
into shape" these twenty years. She liked the stillness and dimness of
the small room, with its smell of leather-covered volumes, or whiff of
wood smoke from the fireplace.

Mrs. Dale rarely disturbed them. "If Helen finds any pleasure in that
musty old room," she said, one cold January morning, "I'm sure I'm glad.
But she would be a great deal more sensible and cheerful if she'd sit up
in the parlor with me, if she didn't do anything more than play patience.
But then, Helen never was like other people."

And so she left her niece and her husband, with a little good-natured
contempt in her eyes, and went up to her own domains. Mr. Dale was
arranging some plants on a shelf across one of the windows, and Helen was
watching him. "They generally die before the winter is out," he said,
"but perhaps with you to look after them they'll pull through."

He was in his flowered dressing-gown, and was standing on tiptoe,
reaching up for one of the mildewed flower-pots. "These