"I would—at least I think I would have," he corrected, "if you'd been alone. By-the-way, I saw her in Minneapolis the other day. She was taking an order from a fat Frenchman in a restaurant where Smythe and I had turned in for dinner. Luckily her back was turned, so we got out without her seeing me. But I caught her profile and she looked dreadfully weak and thin."
"A waitress?" Helen cried. "Oh, the poor thing! Couldn't you have—" Pausing, she confirmed his wisdom. "No, it was better she did not see you."
Silence fell between them, he thinking of the temptation in the warm gloaming, she busy with her own memories. Helen's watch beat like a pulse in the quiet; a house-fly rivalled the full boom of a bee as it battered its head against the window-pane, a futile illustration of Elinor Leslie's folly. Just so had she beaten at the invisible barriers that held her back from free passion. Now she lay, poor soul, bruised and beaten like a dying moth, wings singed by a single touch of the unholy flame.
But sadness could not hold them. Smiling, Helen suddenly relieved herself of the astonishing remark: "I am so glad you are ruined. Yes, I am." She nodded firmly, misreading his comical surprise. "Now we can go back to the farm—just you and I—be ever so happy."
"Why?" He listened with huge enjoyment to her explanation, then said, with mock concern, "It would be fine, and I'm that sorry to disappoint you, but—who said I was ruined?"
"Oh, everybody—the papers said this morning that—what is that funny name? Yes, Mr. Brass Bowels—that he had bought up enough of your liabilities to snow you under."
"They did, did they? Well—they have another guess coming."
"Aren't you ruined?" she asked.
But though he laughed at her naïve distress, he refused to say more, laughingly assuring her that she would not be long in suspense.
Nor had she long to wait. For as she was giving him his medicine the following afternoon, he bobbed up under her hand as though set on wire springs to the detriment of the snowy quilt, which absorbed the dose.