way back she had made her new friends promise to be
often together with her in the home of their youth. She had made them
promise this so prettily and with such gentle warmth that it was very
natural that Gerald, in talking over the event with Helen that evening,
should say, strolling round Helen's little sitting-room, 'She's rather a
dear, that little friend of yours.'

Helen was tired and lay extended on the divan in the grey dress she had
not had time to change. She had doffed her hat and, thrusting its
hatpins through it, had laid it on her knees, so that, as Gerald had
remarked, she looked rather like Bruenhilde on her rocky couch. But,
unlike Bruenhilde, her hands were clasped behind her neck, and she looked
up at the ceiling. 'A perfect little dear,' she assented.

'Did you notice her eyes when she was talking about the foxes? They were
as sorrowful and piteous as a Mater Dolorosa's. She is definite enough
about some things, isn't she? Things like right and wrong, I mean, as
she sees them.'

'Yes; she is clear about outside things, like right and wrong.'

'It's a good deal to be clear about, isn't it?'

'I suppose so,' Helen reflected. 'I don't feel that I really understand
Althea. People who aren't clear about themselves are difficult to
understand, I think.'

'It's that that really gives them a mystery. I feel that she really is a
little mysterious,' said Gerald. 'One wonders what she would do in
certain cases, and feel in certain situations, and one can't remotely
imagine. She is a sealed book.'

'_She_ wonders,' said Helen.

'And you suspect that her pages are empty?'

Helen reflected, but nothing seemed to come. She closed her eyes,
smiling, and said, 'Be off, please. I'm getting too sleepy to have
suspicions. We have plenty of time to find out whether anything is
written on Althea's pages.'

CHAPTER VIII.

But, when Gerald was gone, Helen found that she was no longer sleepy.
She lay, her eyes closed, straight and still, like an effigy on a tomb,
and she thought, intently and quietly. It was more a series of pictures
than a linking of ideas with which her mind was occupied--pictures of
her childhood and girlhood in Scotland and at Merriston House. It was
dispassionately that she watched the little figure, lonely, violent,
walking over the moors, hiding in the thickets of the garden, choking
with tears of fury, clenching teeth over fierce resentments. She almost
smiled at the sight of he