"And if you hadn't sent me down there, I do believe it'd never have happened. Just think!—though we've loved each other practically from the first meeting. He says it was his feeling about me that started him to struggling against that bad woman. Do you remember——"
"Yes, I remember," said Courtney. How dead it all was!—dead with the death that leaves no scar upon the heart, only a lesson in the memory. How could it ever have seemed living?—and immortal!
"Oh—of course you remember. You knew about her."
"Not much about her," replied Courtney. Pensively, "Really, nothing at all."
"I'm sure I don't want to know anything. The less a good woman knows about evil, the better.... I think recently he must have almost succeeded in breaking away; for, to-day I'm sure he was hesitating at the parting of the ways—whether to go back to her or not. And my coming there decided him. Isn't it beautiful?"
"Like a fairy tale," said Courtney, taking up her brush and eying critically the little landscape to which she was giving the finishing touches. "But, my dear, I don't think you ought to tell me these things."
She felt selfish in saying this; Helen had inexperienced youth's irresistible craving to confide, and was simply bursting with simple and innocent vanity over having achieved the double triumph of both spiritual and worldly advantage. But Helen was not to be suppressed or even discouraged. "Oh, yes," replied she. "He asked me to tell you we are engaged. I think he knows you've heard about that woman who was dragging him down, and thought you could advise me whether he was a fit man for me to marry. You see he feels he's been very bad."
"Men always like to think that," said Courtney. "But as long as they think so, they're not. No, he isn't bad, as men go. He wants to settle down. And he will settle down—with you." She was looking at the landscape but her quizzical eyes were seeing the pair of them a few years hence, contentedly yawning at each other, leading the conventional life of the well-to-do that swathes them body and mind in soft, indolent fat.
Helen had only half listened to Courtney, as she cared as little as the next woman about her lover's past, and knew for herself that he was high-minded and of the noblest instincts. She halted her own and Courtney's musings with an absent, "I feel that way about it, too." She moved nervously about the room, from time to time casting an appealing glance at her absorbed friend. Finally she burst out desperately: "There's something I want your advice about. I don't know whether I've done right or not."
"Yes?" said Courtney, encouragingly.