Helen felt like a guilty thing as she made her preparations, and once resolved to give it up. Going to the office where she found Mark alone, she said to him, “I can’t do it. I’d rather stay and brave mother and Craig than sneak off this way.”
“Very well,” Mark said, looking at her with an expression before which her eyes fell. “Suit yourself,” and he turned to his papers again.
“Do you wish to give it up?” she asked timidly, and he replied, “Certainly not for myself. But I know you, and that between your mother and Mr. Mason I should get the worst of it and lose you, while you might lose us both.”
This was a catastrophe which Helen did not care to contemplate. She had staked everything and could not lose.
“I’ll go,” she said.
Mark put out his hand and taking one of hers pressed it warmly as he said, “My darling, you shall never regret it.”
After this there was no wavering on Helen’s part. She ate, or tried to eat, her early lunch; was very loving to her mother when she said good-bye, and went so far as to kiss Mrs. Taylor, who wondered at her effusiveness, when she was to be gone so short a time. As she passed the office Mark sauntered to the door and said, “Off so soon? Is it time?”
“Yes, good-bye,” she answered gayly, while he returned to the papers and accounts he was putting in order for his successor, and feeling pangs of remorse as he thought how Mr. Taylor would miss and mourn for him.
Uncle Zacheus went to the station with Helen, and at the last moment when the train was in sight he said to her, “Wall, good-bye. You’ll be comin’ back tomorrer, or I should be sorry, you seem so like our folks.”
She grasped his pudgy hand and said, “I can’t begin to tell you how kind you have been to me, or how much I have enjoyed myself at your house. Good-bye.”