Helen was silent for a little while. She was wondering; not about Mr. Kane, nor about his suffering, nor about the oddity of thus talking with him about her own. It was no more odd to talk to him than if he had been the warm-hearted dog, dowered for her benefit with speech; she was wondering about what he said and about that love to which he alluded. 'Perhaps I don't know much about love,' she said, and more to herself than to Mr. Kane.
'I've inferred that since knowing you,' said Franklin.
'I mean, of course,' Helen defined, 'the selfless love you are talking of.'
'Yes, I understand,' said Franklin. 'Now, you see, the other sort of love, the sort that makes people go away and cry in the woods—for I've been crying because I'm hopelessly in love, Miss Buchanan, and I presume that you are too—well, that sort of love can't escape ruin sometimes. That side of life may go to pieces and then there's nothing left for it but to cry. But that side isn't all life, Miss Buchanan.'
Helen did not repudiate his interpretation of her grief. She was quite willing that Mr. Kane should know why she had been crying, but she did not care to talk about that side to him. It had been always, and it would always be, she feared, all life to her. She looked sombrely before her into the green vistas.
'Of course,' Franklin went on, 'I don't know anything about your hopeless love affair. I'm only sure that your tragedy is a noble one and that you are up to it, you know—as big as it is. If it's hopeless, it's not, I'm sure, because of anything in you. It's because of fate, or circumstance, or some unworthiness in the person you care for. Now with me one of the hardest things to bear is the fact that I've nothing to blame but myself. I'm not adequate, that's the trouble; no charm, you see,' Mr. Kane again almost mused, 'no charm. Charm is the great thing, and it means more than it seems to mean, all evolution, the survival of the fittest—natural selection—is in it, when you come to think of it. If I'd had charm, personality, or, well, greatness of some sort, I'd have probably won Althea long ago. You know, of course, that it's Althea I'm in love with, and have been for years and years. Well, there it is,' Franklin was picking tall blades of grass that grew in a little tuft near by and putting them neatly together as he spoke. 'There it is, but even with the pain of just that sort of failure to bear, I don't intend that my life shall be ruined. It can't be, by the loss of that hope. I'm not good enough for Althea. I've got to accept that; natural selection rejects me,' looking up from his grass blades he smiled gravely at his companion; 'but I'm good enough for other beautiful things that need serving. And I'm good enough to go on being Althea's friend, to be of some value to her in that capacity. So my life isn't ruined, not by a long way, and I wish you'd try to feel the same about yours.'
Helen didn't feel in the least inclined to try, but she found herself deeply interested in Mr. Kane's attitude; for the first time Mr. Kane had roused her intent interest. She looked hard at him while he sat there, demonstrating to her the justice of life's dealings with him and laying one blade of grass so accurately against another, and she was wondering now about him. It was not because she thought her own feelings sacred that she preferred them to be concealed, but she saw that Mr. Kane's were no less sacred to him for being thus unconcealed. She even guessed that his revelation of feeling was less for his personal relief than for her personal benefit; that he was carrying out, in all the depths of his sincerity, a wish to comfort her, to take her out of herself. Well, he had taken her out of herself, and after having heard that morning what Althea's significance could be in the life of another man, she was curious to find what her so different significance could be in the life of this one, as alien from Gerald in type and temperament as it was possible to imagine. Why did Althea mean anything at all to Gerald, and why did she mean everything to Mr. Kane? And through what intuition of the truth had Mr. Kane come to his present hopelessness?
'Do you think women always fall in love with the adequate man, and vice versa?' she asked, and her eyes were gentle as they mused on him. 'Why should you say that it's because you're not adequate that Althea isn't in love with you?'
Franklin fixed his eye upon her and it had now a new light, it deepened for other problems than Helen's and his own. 'Not adequate for her—not what she wants—that's my point,' he said. 'But there are other sorts of mistakes to make, of course. If Althea falls in love with a man equipped as I'm not equipped, that does prove that I lack something that would have won her; but it doesn't prove that she's found the right man. We've got beyond natural selection when it comes to life as a whole. He may be the man for her to fall in love with, but is he the man to make her happy? That's just the question for me, Miss Buchanan, and I wish you'd help me with it.'
'Help you?' Helen rather faltered.