"I don't know what to
take," she said again.

"I'm doing it," Helen told her. "You mustn't lose the train."

"No." She stood up, and, going to the dressing-table, she leaned on it
as though she searched intently for something lying there. "I expect he
will be dead," she said. "It's a long way. All those frontiers--"

Helen looked at the bent back, and her pity shaped itself in eager
words. "Shall I come with you? Let me! I can get ready--"

Mildred Caniper straightened herself and turned, and Helen recognized
the blue light in her eye.

"Your presence, Helen," she said distinctly, "will not reduce the number
of the frontiers." Her manner blamed Helen for her own lack of
self-control; but to this her stepchildren were accustomed, and Helen
felt no anger.

"Oh, no," she answered pleasantly; "it would not do that."

She packed on methodically, and while she feigned absorption in that
business her thoughts were swift and troubled, as they were when she was
a little girl and, suffering for Notya's sake, wept in the heather. It
was impossible to help this woman whose curling hair mocked her
sternness, whose sternness so easily collapsed and as easily recovered
at a word; it was, perhaps, intrusive to attempt it, yet the desire was
as quick as Helen's blood.

"You are much too helpful, Helen," Mildred Caniper went on, and softened
that harshness quickly. "You must learn that no one can help anybody
else." She smiled. "You must deny yourself the luxury of trying!"

"I shall remember," Helen said with her quiet acquiescence, "but I must
go now and see about your lunch. Would you mind writing the labels?
Uncle Alfred will want one for his bag. Oh, I know I'm irritating," she
added on a wave of feeling which had to break, "but I can't help it.
I--I'm like that." She reflected with humiliation that it was absurd to
obtrude herself thus on a scene shadowed by tragedy, yet when she saw a
glint of real amusement on Mildred Caniper's face, a new thought came to
her. Perhaps reserve was not so great a virtue as she had believed. She
must not forget; nor must she forget that Miriam considered her a prig,
that Mildred Caniper found her too helpful. She pressed her hands
against her forehead and concentrated her energies on the travellers'
food.

The minutes, busy as they were, dragged by like hours. Uncle Alfred ate
his luncheon with the deliberation of a man who cannot expect to renew
his digestive apparatus, and the road rem