"It isn't nonsense, Harold. Shall I tell you? I hardly like to speak of it. It makes me shudder when I think of what might have been."
"Helen, what on earth do you mean?"
Harold's big eyes were fixed in amazement on his companion's face. She went on speaking more to herself than to him.
"And yet it is true, quite true, though I can scarcely believe it sometimes. And when you say that I am so much nicer and jollier than Grace and Agatha I feel like a hypocrite."
"Helen!"
"They never did what I have done. Just think, Harold, I was so angry and so wicked one day that I tried to run away. Father followed me and brought me back, and he didn't scold me a bit, but he was so sorry that he cried—actually cried. Did you know that a man could cry?"
"I am not sure," said Harold meditatively. Mr. Bayden's manner when he was unduly annoyed by parochial matters, or provoked by his son's iniquities, was often suggestive of tears, consequently the idea of a man's crying presented nothing very tragic to Harold's imagination. Besides, he was a little puzzled by the intensity of Helen's manner, and scarcely understood her.
"I don't see that there was anything very wicked in running away. Of course you would have gone back. What else could you have done? And I daresay you were provoked." Harold spoke soothingly. He knew what it was to be provoked himself, and had had his own dreams of running away to sea, dreams which, it must be allowed, had never shaped themselves very distinctly in his brain. Still, in virtue of them he could sympathize most fully with Helen in her small escapade.
"Yes; but, Harold, you don't understand," she went on. "It was coming out after me on that bitter night that nearly killed my father. Just think: if—if he had died I should have killed him." Helen's voice broke, and she buried her face in her hands.
"Don't, Helen," said Harold after a moment's perplexed pause. "You didn't, you see. It is all right. Very likely your father would have been ill anyway. And besides—"