Bayard shot a tolerant smile at the snow professor’s remains, as he came up the steps.
Helen herself answered his ring. Both of them found this so natural that neither commented upon this little act of friendliness.
The Professor was at his lecture; and Mrs. Carruth was making her final appearance at certain local Cesarea charities; principally, to-day, at the Association for Assisting Indigent Married Students with blankets and baby-clothes. Helen explained these facts with her usual irreverence, as she ushered her visitor into the parlor.
“If I had a fortune,” she observed, “I would found a society in Cesarea for making it a Penal Offence for a Married Man to Study for the Ministry without a Visible Income. The title is a little long, don’t you think? How could we shorten it? It’s worse than the Cruelty to Animals thing. Mr. Bayard?—why, Mr. Bayard!”
When she saw the expression of his face, her own changed with remorseful swiftness.
“You are perfectly right,” he said with sudden, smiting incisiveness. “You are more than right. It is the greatest act of folly of my life that I am here.”
He stood still, and looked at her. The despair she saw in his eyes seemed to her a measureless, bottomless thing.
“I had to come,” he said. “How could I let you go, without—you must see that I had to look upon your face once more. Forgive me—dear!”
Her chin trembled, at the lingering of that last, unlooked-for word.
“I have tried,” said Bayard slowly. “You won’t misunderstand me if I say I have tried to do the best I can, at Windover; and I have failed in it,” he added bitterly, “from every point of view, and in every way!”