Slowly he walked back. “O knowledge, knowledge!—powerless, indeed!” he murmured.
As he thus spoke, a handbill in large capitals met his eyes on a dead wall, “Wanted, a few smart young men for India.”
A crimp accosted him. “You would make a fine soldier, my man. You have stout limbs of your own.” Leonard moved on.
“It has come back then to this,—brute physical force after all! O Mind, despair! O Peasant, be a machine again!” He entered his attic noiselessly, and gazed upon Helen as she sat at work, straining her eyes by the open window—with tender and deep compassion. She had not heard him enter, nor was she aware of his presence. Patient and still she sat, and the small fingers plied busily. He gazed, and saw that her cheek was pale and hollow, and the hands looked so thin! His heart was deeply touched, and at that moment he had not one memory of the baffled Poet, one thought that proclaimed the Egotist.
He approached her gently, laid his hand on her shoulder, “Helen, put on your shawl and bonnet, and walk out,—I have much to say.”
In a few moments she was ready, and they took their way to their favourite haunt upon the bridge. Pausing in one of the recesses, or nooks, Leonard then began, “Helen, we must part!”
“Part?—Oh, brother!”
“Listen. All work that depends on mind is over for me, nothing remains but the labour of thews and sinews. I cannot go back to my village and say to all, ‘My hopes were self-conceit, and my intellect a delusion!’ I cannot. Neither in this sordid city can I turn menial or porter. I might be born to that drudgery, but my mind has, it may be unhappily, raised me above my birth. What, then, shall I do? I know not yet,—serve as a soldier, or push my way to some wilderness afar, as an emigrant, perhaps. But whatever my choice, I must henceforth be alone; I have a home no more. But there is a home for you, Helen, a very humble one (for you too, so well born), but very safe,—the roof of—of—my peasant mother. She will love you for my sake, and—and—”
Helen clung to him trembling, and sobbed out, “Anything, anything you will. But I can work; I can make money, Leonard. I do, indeed, make money,—you do not know how much, but enough for us both till better times come to you. Do not let us part.”
“And I—a man, and born to labour—to be maintained by the work of an infant! No, Helen, do not so degrade me.”