"But we have," was her response; "to take your own words, we are not mere puppets."
Again he walked away from her, and for a few moments there was no sound but that of his heavy footsteps, which seemed to make the silence more solemn and penetrating.
"I will do whatever you ask," he burst out suddenly. "I will even marry her if you wish."
"I ask nothing. It is not I but your convictions you should follow. I am not even able to advise. Your own instincts are better and nobler than any thing I can say to you." She stopped and choked back a sob. "Oh, Grant, it is so hard!" she cried.
She had never used that name before, and it so thrilled him with joy and pain that he made an impulsive movement as if once more to take her in his arms; but she lifted her hand with a gesture of negation.
"I have been tempted as well as you," she continued, "I have said to myself a thousand times that love justified all, and that these theories were too fine spun. I could not keep the thought of you down even when I first knew I was a widow, and I said over and over to myself that now no one stood between us. I knew it was no use, but I lay awake in the night and tried to prove to myself that Ninitta had no claim,—but, oh! you are too much to me for me to be willing that you should do what we both know is wrong and cruel. I can endure anything better than that you should not always be my ideal; and I should hate myself if I tempted you to wrong."
"What I am," he said brokenly, moved most of all by the tears upon her cheeks, "is nothing. You have beaten this temptation, not I; I would have done any thing if you had encouraged me. I am a very ordinary mortal, Helen, when one really knows my littleness."
She smiled through her tears at him.
"You shall not abuse yourself;" she replied. "I will not have it."
There was not much further said between them. They remained together until the dusk filled the studio, and it looked again like a ghost-world as on the morning they two had come into it to see the dead form modeled in red clay. Perhaps it was upon this remembrance that at length Mrs. Greyson said: