Helen bent her head low over her work.
"I suppose it was instinctive," he went on. "To you, I'd seem— Sometimes I feel that, if you and I had kept on with those talks we were having last spring, things would have been different with me. However, it's too late now."
Helen's eyes filled. "Oh, no. It's never too late," said she.
He sighed and rose—Courtney was coming toward them. Helen took no part in the conversation that followed. She was pondering the few meaningless and youthful phrases he had uttered as if they were freighted with wisdom and destiny. And she continued to ponder them after he and Courtney and Winchie went away for a drive to Wenona. The more meaningless a thing is, the more food for thought to those incapable of thinking. When it is clear, it is grasped at once and the incident closes; but let it have no meaning at all, and lives will be devoted to cogitating upon it, and library shelves will groan with tomes of exegesis. Helen found in Basil's words what she wished to find—found a plain mandate of duty to help him. He couldn't be so very bad—probably not so bad as Richard was in his bachelor days, before chemistry and Courtney calmed him. And look at Richard now!
She did not know the very particular dangers for Basil in drink. But she saw that he was taking a great deal more whisky and water than formerly, and she felt that it had to do with his obviously desperate depression. Her one chance to see him, she knew, was when Courtney was occupied; for, had she not led Courtney to think that she did not wish to be left alone with him ever? She decided it was best not to tell Courtney she had changed her mind—somewhat—about him; Courtney would misjudge, would think her careless about principle, weak, love-sick—worst of all, would probably advise against her talking with him. Thus it came to pass that when Courtney was safely occupied—with callers, with Winchie, at sewing or painting or dressing—Helen put herself oftener and oftener in such a position that Basil could find her if he chose. She did not dream that he also wished to be stealthy; she thought the stealth was all on her own side—and he, seeing this, soon pretended to himself that he thought so, too, and had not the slightest sense of guilt toward Courtney. It did not take him long to find a satisfying explanation for Helen's aversion to having it known that they met alone; here, decided he, was another evidence of her modesty, her delicate sensitiveness of the good woman who can't bear being talked about lightly—and, if they talked alone where others could see, there would surely be joking and teasing and gossiping.
Once more habit gave illustration of its subtle grasping of ever more and more power. Before either was aware of it, they were meeting clandestinely with clocklike regularity. And Helen's life filled with sunshine of the most delicious warmth and sparkle. And Basil, keeping steadily on at his drinking, and never relaxing in his devotion to the sweet sin of which Courtney was the scarlet altar, reveled in those agonies of a sense of utter depravity that are about the only charm of wickedness. "I am not fit to live," reflected he with comfortable gloom, as he sat in his apartment alone drinking after an afternoon with Helen and a late evening with Courtney. Here was excellent excuse for drinking and gloriously damning himself. He did not go to bed until he had finished the bottle and the last cigarette in the big silver box on his table. Also, between spasms of self-damning he had contrived to finish a novel of intrigue that had as its villain-hero just such a devil of a fellow as he felt he himself was—or was in delightful danger of becoming.
How it ever befell he never could remember. But the day came when he, sitting with Helen in the summerhouse—the summerhouse!—found himself holding her hand. He stared at the pretty white hand, large and capable yet feminine in every curve. He noted that it was lying contentedly, confidingly upon the brown of his palm. He lifted his dazed eyes. Her lashes were down, her cheeks overspread with delicate color; her bosom, like a young Juno's, rose and fell with agitated irregularity. It was not poisonous mock morality, it was the decent human man underneath, that sent an honestly horrified "Good God!" to his lips. He laid her hand gently in her lap, stood up, thrust his hands deep into his trousers pockets. His face was red with real shame.
"I've often told you," said he, "that I'm no fit companion for a pure woman—that my life's ruined past redeeming——"
"Don't say those things," she implored. "They hurt me—and they're not so. I know you."
"Past redeeming," he repeated. "It's the God's truth. I must keep away from you. I've no right to see you—to care for you—to tempt you to care for me. I can't tell you—but if you knew, you'd loathe me as I loathe myself."