'Not in that way,' said Helen. She was grave and clear; she had not a hesitation. 'But that way is ruined and over for me. I could live for you, though. I could make it worth your while.'
He looked, and he could say nothing. Against his need of Helen he must measure Althea's need of him. He must measure, too—ah, cruel perplexity—the chance for Helen's happiness. She was unhesitating; but how could she know herself so inflexible, how could she know that the hard heart might not melt? For the sake of Helen's happiness he must measure not only Gerald's need of her against his own and Gerald's power against his own mere pitifulness, but he must wonder, in an agony of sudden surmise, which, in the long-run, could give her most, the loved or the unloved man. In all his life no moment had ever equalled this in its fulness, and its intensity, and its pain. It thundered, it rushed, it darkened—like the moment of death by drowning and like the great river that bears away the drowning man. Memories flashed in it, broken and vivid—of Althea's eyes and Helen's smile; Althea so appealing, Helen so strong; and, incongruous in its remoteness, a memory of the bleak, shabby little street in a Boston suburb, the small wooden house painted brown, where he was born, where scanty nasturtiums flowered on the fence in summer, and in winter, by the light of a lamp with a ground glass shade, his mother's face, careful, worn, and gentle, bent over the family mending. Where, indeed, had the river borne him, and what had been done to him?
Helen's voice came to him, and Helen's face reshaped itself—a strange and lovely beacon over the engulfing waters. She saw his torment and she understood. 'Go to her if you must,' she said; 'and I know that you must. But don't go with mistaken ideas. Remember what I tell you. Nothing is changed—for me, or in me. If Althea doesn't want you back—or if Althea does want you back—I shall be waiting.' And, seeing his extremity, Helen, grave and clear, filled her cup of magic to the brim. As she had said that morning, she said now—but with what a difference: 'Kiss me good-bye, Franklin.'
He could not move towards her; he could not kiss her; but, smiling more tenderly than he could have thought Helen would ever smile, she put her arms around him and drew his rapt, transfigured face to hers. And holding him tenderly, she kissed him and said: 'Whatever happens—you've had the best of me.'
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Althea, since the misty walk with Gerald, had been plunged in a pit of mental confusion. She swung from accepted abasement to the desperate thought of the magnanimity in such abasement; she dropped from this fragile foothold to burning resentment, and, seeing where resentment must lead her, she turned again and clasped, with tight-closed eyes, the love that, looked upon, could not be held without humiliation. Self-doubt and self-analysis had brought her to this state of pitiful chaos. The only self left seemed centred in her love; if she did not give up Gerald, what was left her but accepted abasement? If she let him go, it would be to own to herself that she had failed to hold him, to see herself as a nonentity. Yet, to go on clinging, what would that show? Only with closed eyes could she cling. To open them for the merest glimmer was to see that she was, indeed, nothing, if she had not strength to relinquish a man who did not any longer, in any sense, wish to make her his wife. With closed eyes one might imagine that it was strength that clung; with open eyes one saw that it was weakness.
Miss Harriet Robinson, all alert gaiety and appreciation, had arrived at Merriston on Saturday, had talked all through Sunday, and had come up to London with Althea and Gerald on Monday morning. Gerald had gone to a smoking-carriage, and Althea had hardly exchanged a word with him. She and Miss Robinson went to a little hotel in Mayfair, a hotel supposed to atone for its costliness and shabbiness by some peculiar emanation of British comfort. Americans of an earnest, if luxurious type, congregated there and found a satisfactory local flavour in worn chintzes and uneven passages. Lady Blair had kindly pressed Althea to stay with her in South Kensington and be married from her house; but even a week ago, when this plan had been suggested, Althea had shrunk from it. It had seemed, even then, too decisive. Once beneath Lady Blair's quasi-maternal roof one would be propelled, like a labelled parcel, resistlessly to the altar. Even then Althea had felt that the little hotel in Mayfair, with its transient guests and impersonal atmosphere, offered further breathing space for indefiniteness.
She was thankful indeed for breathing space as, on the afternoon of her arrival, she sat sunken in a large chair and felt, as one relief, that she would not see Miss Robinson again until evening. It had been tormenting, all the journey up, to tear herself from her own sick thoughts and to answer Miss Robinson's unsuspecting comments and suggestions.
Miss Robinson was as complacent and as beaming as though she had herself 'settled' Althea. She richly embroidered the themes, now so remote, that had once occupied poor Althea's imagination—house-parties at Merriston; hostess-ship on a large scale in London; Gerald's seat in Parliament taken as a matter-of-course. Althea, feeling the intolerable irony, had attempted vague qualifications; Gerald did not care for politics; she herself preferred a quieter life; they probably could not afford a town house. But to such disclaimers Miss Robinson opposed the brightness of her faith in her friend's capacities. 'Ah, my dear, it's your very reticence, your very quietness, that will tell. Once settled—I've always felt it of you—you will make your place—and your place can only be a big one. My only regret is that you won't get your wedding-dress in Paris—oh yes, I know that they have immensely improved over here; but, for cut and cachet, Paris is still the only place.'