The Road to Understanding

by Eleanor H. Porter

Ten minutes later he boarded the train for Boston.

To his sister again he told the story of a Dalton trip, and, as before, he omitted not one detail.

"But I can't write, of course, to Helen, now," he finished gloomily. "That is, I can't urge her coming back—not in the face of Burke's angry assertion that he never wants to see her again."

"Of course not. But don't worry, dear. I haven't given up hope, by any means. Burke worshiped his father. His heart is almost breaking now, at his loss. It is perfectly natural, under the circumstances, that he should have this intense anger toward anything that ever grieved his loved father. But wait. That's all we can do, anyway. I'll write to Helen, of course, and tell her of her father-in-law's death, but—"

"You wouldn't tell her what Burke said, Edith!"

"Oh, no, no, indeed!—unless I have to, Frank—unless she asks me."

But Helen did ask her. By return steamer came her letter expressing her shocked distress at John Denby's death, and asking timidly, but urgently, if, in Mrs. Thayer's opinion, it were the time now when she should come home—if she would be welcomed by her husband. To this, of course, there was but one answer possible; and reluctantly Mrs. Thayer gave it.

"And to think," groaned the doctor, "that when now, for the first time, Helen is willing to come, we have to tell her—she can't!"

"I know, but"—Edith Thayer resolutely blinked off the tears—"I haven't given up yet. Just wait."

And the doctor waited. It was, indeed, as his sister said, all that he could do. From time to time he went up to Dalton and made his way up the old familiar walk to have a chat with the taciturn, somber-eyed man sitting alone in the great old library. The doctor never spoke of Helen. He dared not take the risk. Burke Denby's only interests plainly were business, books, and the rare curios he and his father had collected. A Mrs. Gowing, a distant cousin, had come to be his housekeeper, but the doctor saw little of her. She seemed to be a quiet, inoffensive little woman, plainly very much in the background.