'I'm always afraid that I show it dreadfully. That's the worst of it, I don't dare indulge in it often.'
'No, you don't show it much. You sometimes look as though you had been crying when I'm sure you haven't—early in the morning, for instance.'
Helen could but smile again. 'You are very observant. You really noticed that?'
'I don't know that I'm so very observant, Miss Buchanan, but I'm interested in everybody, and I'm particularly interested in you, so that of course I notice things like that. Now you aren't particularly interested in me—though you are so kind—are you?' and again Mr. Kane smiled his weary, gentle smile.
It seemed very natural to sit under peaceful trees and talk to Mr. Kane, and it was easy to be perfectly frank with him. Helen answered his smile. 'No, I'm not. I'm quite absorbed in my own affairs. I'm interested in hardly anybody. I'm very selfish.'
'Ah, you would find that you wouldn't suffer so—in just your way, I mean—if you were less selfish,' Franklin Kane remarked.
'What other way is there?' Helen asked. 'What is your way?'
'Well, I don't know that I've found a much better one, our ways seem to have brought us to pretty much the same place, haven't they,' he almost mused. 'That's the worst of suffering, it's pretty much alike, at all times and in all ways. I'm not unselfish either, you know, a mighty long way from it. But I'm not sick of it, you know, not sick to death of it. Forgive me if I offend in repeating your words.'
'You are unselfish, I'm sure of that,' said Helen. 'And so you must have other things to live for. My life is very narrow, and when things I care about are ruined I see nothing further.'
'Things are never ruined in life, Miss Buchanan. As long as there is life there is hope and action and love. As long as you can love you can't be sick to death of it.' Mr. Kane spoke in his deliberate, monotonous tones.