"John," she said, "I am so glad to see you; but I—I want to tell you. Everything here is so new, I—I don't—"
It must all be true; I remember her exact words. They came slowly, hesitated, stopped.
"Are you—what do you mean, Helen?"
"Let me tell you; let me think. Don't—please don't be angry."
Through the fog that enveloped me I felt her distress and smarted from the wrong I did so beautiful a creature.
"I—I didn't expect you so soon," the music sighed pleadingly. "I—we mustn't hurry about—what we used to talk of. New York is so different!—Oh, but it isn't that! How shall I make you understand?"
"I understand enough," I said dully; "or rather—Great Heavens!—I understand nothing; nothing but that—you are taking back your promise, aren't you? Or Helen's promise; whose was it?"
I could not feel as if I were speaking to my sweetheart. The figure before me wore her pearl-set Kappa key—the badge of her college fraternity; it wore, too, a trim, dark blue dress—Helen's favourite colour and mine—but there resemblance seemed to stop.
Confused as I still was by the glory I gazed on, I began painfully comparing the Nelly I remembered and the Helen I had found. My Helen was not quite so tall, but at twenty girls grow. She did not sway with the yielding grace of a young white birch; but she was slim and straight, and girlish angles round easily to curves. Though I felt a subtle and wondrous change, I could not trace or track the miracle.
My Helen had blue-gray eyes; this Helen's eyes might, in some lights, be blue-gray; they seemed of as many tints as the sea. They were dark, luminous and velvet soft as they watched my struggle. A few minutes earlier they had been of extraordinary brilliancy.