"My old man, be not angry. If thou win thou wilt preserve her in thy heart as a saint, and I will say to her: Go, bright angel, along the path of duty, as Yosef went."
CHAPTER XVI
Helena hardly believed her own happiness. She was preparing for her marriage. Her clouded past had vanished, life's night was over, the morning was shining.
From a woman of a wandering star, who knew not where and how low she might fall, from a woman who was a beggar, from a woman without a morrow, to enter into a new period of life, to receive the affection of a man whom she loved, to become in the future a wife, to begin a calm life, a life which had a to-morrow, surrounded by respect, filled with love and duty,—that was her future.
Helena understood, or rather had a prescience of the abnormal relation between her past and her future. "From such a life as mine that ought not to come. I am not worthy of this happiness," whispered she to Yosef, when he placed the ring of betrothal on her finger. "I am not worthy of such happiness."
That half-insane woman possessed of love was right. Out of the logic of life such a future could not bloom, but her life had ceased already to move in its own proper orbit.
There are stars which circle in solitude along undefined orbits, till swept away by more powerful planets they go farther, either around them or with them.
Something similar had happened to Helena.
A stronger will had attracted a weaker. Helena met Yosef on her track, and thenceforward she travelled in his course.
The knowledge of this made her more peaceful. "Oh, if he wishes I shall be happy," thought she, more than once.