t he should continue to wear out his soul and
body for this girl who did not want what he had to give, who treated him
less considerately than a man whom she met for the first time at dinner?"
He felt he had reached the breaking-point; that the time had come when
he must consider what he owed to himself. There could never be any other
woman save Helen, but as it was not to be Helen, he could no longer,
with self-respect, continue to proffer his love only to see it slighted
and neglected. He was humble enough concerning himself, but of his love
he was very proud. Other men could give her more in wealth or position,
but no one could ever love her as he did. "He that hath more let
him give," he had often quoted to her defiantly, as though he were
challenging the world, and now he felt he must evolve a make-shift world
of his own--a world in which she was not his only spring of acts; he
must begin all over again and keep his love secret and sacred until she
understood it and wanted it. And if she should never want it he would at
least have saved it from many rebuffs and insults.

With this determination strong in him, the note Helen had left for him
after her talk with Marion, and the flowers, and the note with them,
saying she was coming to take tea on the morrow, failed to move him
except to make him more bitter. He saw in them only a tardy recognition
of her neglect--an effort to make up to him for thoughtlessness which,
from her, hurt him worse than studied slight.

A new regime had begun, and he was determined to establish it firmly and
to make it impossible for himself to retreat from it; and in the note
in which he thanked Helen for the flowers and welcomed her to tea, he
declared his ultimatum.

"You know how terribly I feel," he wrote; "I don't have to tell you
that, but I cannot always go on dragging out my love and holding it up
to excite your pity as beggars show their sores. I cannot always go on
praying before your altar, cutting myself with knives and calling upon
you to listen to me. You know that there is no one else but you, and
that there never can be any one but you, and that nothing is changed
except that after this I am not going to urge and torment you. I shall
wait as I have always waited--only now I shall wait in silence. You know
just how little, in one way, I have to offer you, and you know just how
much I have in love to offer you. It is now for you to speak--some day,
or never. But you will ha