"I don't see," answered Helena, suspicious.
"No," said the other, and then paused. Helena thought that she had finished, when she suddenly began again. "I've been alone a good deal these three years, and I have thought a lot about marriage. Oh, not for myself, no" (she spoke so sadly that Helena relented for a moment); "but because my life now is so different from the one I spent with Hubert, and that makes one think. You know, if I'd my life to live again, I'd live it all alone—I'm afraid, yes, I'd sacrifice Hubert: men are born to marry, not to live with sisters!—but I'd have my life-work."
"And yet," swiftly interrupted Helena in triumph, "you ask me to give up mine?"
"I don't." She spoke decisively. "I only ask you not to sacrifice Hubert's to it."
"I still don't understand." Her voice was almost resentful.
"Hubert married you," began Ruth expansively, "because he is the sort of man who needs encouragement. He wanted some one who'd think his work wonderful and ask him how he did it. You surely see the difference? Imagine his life now, for any one like him: your bigger sales, your long reviews, your photographs, his own eclipse. It is impossible."
Helena remembered the press-notice and spoke more obediently. "What are you asking me to do then?"
"Leave him." The words dropped out like heavy weights.
"Leave him?" cried Helena, and by a natural dramatic instinct she rose from her chair. "Leave him when I'm fond of him?"
Ruth looked very earnest. "Leave him," she said again, "unless you're fond enough of him to give up your career. I tell you—I know—you can not have both, with Hubert."