It was hard to meet Ethel—and Milly and Mrs. Baker afterwards.
To-day, in preparing to move to our new home, I came across the rough notes I wrote last December, when the marvel of Helen's beauty was fresh to me. As I read the disjointed and half incredulous words I had set to paper, I found myself living over again those days of Faery and enchantment.
Custom has somewhat dulled the shock of her beauty; I have grown quickly used to her as the most radiantly lovely of created beings; my mind has been drawn to dwell upon moral problems and to sorrow at seeing her gradually become the victim of her beauty—her nature, once as fine as the outward form that clothes it, warped by constant adulation, envy and strife; until—
But it is a miracle! As unbelievable, as unthinkable as it was on the very first day when that glowing dream of loveliness made manifest floated toward me in the little room overlooking Union Square, and I was near swooning with pure delight of vision.
Beautiful; wonderful! She didn't love me then and she doesn't now; but the most marvellous woman in the world needs me—and I will not fail her.
I wish I could take her out of the city for a change of mental atmosphere. She shrinks from her father's suggestion of a summer on the farm. But in time her wholesome nature must reassert itself; she must become, if not again the fresh, light-hearted girl I knew a year ago, a sweet and gracious woman whose sufferings will have added pathos to her charm.
And even now she's not to be judged like other women; before the shining of her beauty, reproach falls powerless. It is my sacred task to guard her—to soothe her awakening from all that nightmare of inflated hopes and vain imaginings. Kitty Reid and—-yes, and little Ethel—will help me.
Kitty is a good fellow.
"Why, cert.," she said when I begged her last Wednesday to take care of Helen. "Married! Did you say married? Oh, Cadge, quit pegging shoes!"
Jumping up from the drawing table, Kitty left streams of India ink making her beastesses all tigers while she called to Miss Bryant, who was pounding viciously upon a typewriter:—