watching Mr. Kane with a dim, speculative sympathy. There was nothing
else of much interest to watch, as far as she was aware, for Helen's
powers of observation were not sharpened by much imaginativeness. Her
sympathy must be aroused for her to care to see, and just now she felt
no sympathy for any one but Mr. Kane.

Gerald, flirting far less flagrantly and sketching assiduously, was in
no need of sympathy; nor Althea, despite the fact that Helen felt her to
be a little reserved and melancholy. Althea, on the whole, seemed
placidly enough absorbed in her duties of hostess, and her state of
mind, at no time much preoccupying Helen, preoccupied her now less than
ever. The person who really interested her, now that she had come to
look at him and to realise that he was suffering, was Mr. Kane. He was
puzzling to her, not mystifying; there was no element of depth or shadow
about him; even his suffering--it was odd to think that a person with
such a small, flat nose should suffer--even his suffering was pellucid.
He puzzled her because he was different from anything she had ever
encountered, and he made her think of a page of trite phrases printed in
a half-comprehended dialect. If it was puzzling that any man should be
sufficiently in love with Althea to suffer over it, it was yet more
puzzling that, neglected as he so obviously was by his beloved, he
should show no dejection or consciousness of diminution. He seemed a
little aimless, it is true, but not in the least injured; and Helen, as
she watched him, found herself liking Mr. Kane.

He had an air, pleasant to her, of finding no one beneath him, and at
the same time he seemed as unaware of superiority--unless it were
definitely moral or intellectual. A general indiscriminating goodwill
was expressed in his manner towards everybody, and when he did
discriminate--which was always on moral issues--his goodwill seemed
unperturbed by any amount of reprobation. He remained blandly humane
under the most disconcerting circumstances. She overtook him one day in
a lane holding a drunkard by the shoulder and endeavouring to steer him
homeward, while he expounded to him in scientific tones the ill effects
of alcohol on the system, and the remarkable results to be attained by
steady self-suggestion. Mr. Kane's collar was awry and his coat dusty,
almost as dusty as the drunkard's, with whom he had evidently had to
grapple in raising him from the highway; and Helen, as she paused at