; came home to--you.
That is all!"

Ledyard bent and laid a handful of boughs upon the fire. The room was
cold and cheerless, and the still, white figure in the chair seemed the
quiet, chill heart of it all. And yet--how she had loved and laboured for
the boy! Was she passionless or had her passion been killed while at
white heat?

"And--and I suppose Dick must know?"

"Yes. Dick must know."

There was no sternness, but there was determination in the strong, even
voice. Then:

"Helen, let me do this for you!"

For a moment the uplifted eyes faltered and fell away from the man's
face. Very faintly the words came:

"God bless you! I could not bear to see--him fail me. If he must--fail,
I cannot see him until--afterward."

The blaze rose higher, and the dark room was a background for that
deathlike form before the hearth.

Ledyard left the room silently, and a moment later Helen Travers heard
his heavy footfall on the porch outside. Presently the erratic violin
playing ceased and there seemed no sound on the face of the earth.

After what seemed hours, Pine, the guide, entered the room to replenish
the fire, and Helen told him he need not light the lamps. After his going
another aching silence followed through which, at last, stole the
consciousness that she was not alone. Some one had come into the room
from a long window opening on the piazza. Helen dared not look, for if it
were Ledyard she would know that things were very bad indeed. Then came
the slightly dragging step that she had learned to be so grateful for
after the helplessness of crippled childhood. Still she did not move, nor
deeply hope. The boy was kind, oh! so tenderly kind, he might only have
come because he must!

The red glow of the fire made the woman's form by the hearth vividly
distinct, and toward that Dick Travers went as if led by a gleam through
a new and strange experience. He knelt by her side and, for a moment,
buried his face against her clasped hands; then he looked up and she saw
only intensified love and trust upon his young face. She waited for him
to speak, her heart was choking her.

"You thought, dear, that I did not know--that I had forgotten? I wonder
if any lonely, burdened little chap could forget--what came before you
lifted the load and taught me to be a--child? Oh! she was so sweet; such
a playfellow. I realize it now even though she has faded into something
like a shadowy dream. But I recall, too, the loneliness;