'But you had become the greatest friends.'
She was aware that she must seem to be trying, strangely, incredibly, to prove to Helen that she had been in love with Franklin; to prove to her that she had no right not to resent anything; no right to find forgiveness so easy. But there was no time now to stop.
'Of course we became the greatest friends,' Helen said, and it was as if with relief for the outlet. She was bewildered, and did not know where they were going. 'I don't need to tell you what I think of Franklin. He is the dearest and best of men, and you are the luckiest of women to have won him.'
'Ah,' uncontrollably Althea rose to her feet with almost the cry, 'I see; you think me lucky to have won a man who, in himself, without money, wasn't good enough for you. Thank you.'
For a long moment—and in it they both recognised that the crash had come, and that they were struggling in dark, cold water—Helen was silent. She kept her eyes on Althea and she did not move. Then, while she still looked steadily upon her, a slow colour rose in her cheeks. It was helplessly, burningly, that she blushed, and Althea saw that she blushed as much for anger as for shame, and that the shame was for her.
She did not need Helen's blush to show her what she had done, what desecration she had wrought. Her own blood beat upwards in hot surges and tears rushed into her eyes. She covered her face with her hands and dropped again into her chair, sobbing.
Helen did not help her out. She got up and went to the mantelpiece and looked down at the fire for some moments. And at last she spoke, 'I didn't mean that either. I think that Franklin is too good for either of us.'
'Good!' wept Althea. 'He is an angel. Do you suppose I don't see that? But why should I pretend when you don't. I'm not in love with Franklin. I'm unworthy of him—more unworthy of him than you were—but I'm not in love with him, even though he is an angel. So don't tell me that I am lucky. I am a most miserable woman.' And she wept on, indifferent now to any revelations.
Presently she heard Helen's voice. It was harder than she had ever known it. 'May I say something? It's for his sake—more than for yours. What I advise you to do is not to bother so much about love. You couldn't stick to Gerald because you weren't loved enough; and you're doubting your feeling for Franklin, now, because you can't love him enough. Give it all up. Follow my second-rate example. Be glad that you're marrying an angel and that he has all that money. And do remember that though you're not getting what you want, you are getting a good deal and he is getting nothing, so try to play the game and to see if you can't make it up to him; see if you can't make him happy.'
Althea's sobbing had now ceased, though she kept her face still covered. Bitter sadness, too deep now for resentment, was in her silence, a silence in which she accepted what Helen's words had of truth. The sadness was to see at last to the full, that she had no place in Helen's life. There was no love, there was hardly liking, behind Helen's words. And so it had been from the very first, ever since she had loved and Helen accepted; ever since she had gone forth carrying gifts, and Helen had stood still and been vaguely aware that homage was being offered. It had, from the very beginning, been this; Helen, hard, self-centred, insensible, so that anything appealing or uncertain was bound to be shattered against her. And was not this indifference to offered love a wrong done to it, something that all life cried out against? Had not weakness and fear and the clinging appeal of immaturity their rights, so that the strong heart that was closed to them, that did not go out to them in tenderness and succour, was the dull, the lesser heart? Dimly she knew, not exculpating herself, not judging her beautiful Helen, that though she had, in her efforts towards happiness, pitifully failed, there was failure too in being blind, in being unconscious of any effort to be made. The more trivial, the meaner aspect of her grief was merged in a fundamental sincerity.