T the corner of the street Helen encountered Sanders, who was waiting for her. At the sight of him standing on the edge of the sidewalk, impatiently tapping the toe of his neatly shod foot with the ferrule of his tightly rolled silk umbrella, she experienced a shock which would have eluded analysis. He had been so completely out of her thoughts, and her present mood was of such an entrancing nature that she felt a desire to indulge it undisturbed. The bare thought of the platitudes she would have to exchange with any one ignorant of her dazzling discovery was unpleasant. After all, what was it about Sanders that vaguely incited her growing disapproval? This morning could it possibly be his very faultlessness of attire, his spick-and-span air of ownership in her body and soul because of their undefined understanding as to his suit, or was it because—because he had, although through no fault of his own, taken no part in the thing which today, for Helen, somehow, held more weight than all other earthly happenings? Indeed, fate was not using the Darley visitor kindly. He was unwittingly like a healthy soldier on a furlough making himself useful in the drawing-room while news of victory was pouring in from his comrades at the front.
“You see I waited for you,” he said, gracefully raising his hat; “but, Helen, what has happened? Why, what is the matter?”
“Nothing,” she said; “nothing at all.”
“But,” he went on, frowning in perplexity as he suited his step to hers, “I never saw any one in my life change so suddenly. Why, when you went into that office you were simply a picture of despair, but now you look as if you were bursting with happiness. Your face is flushed, your eyes are fairly dancing. Helen, if I thought—”
He paused, his own color rising, a deeper frown darkening his brow.
“If you thought what?” she asked, with a little irritation.
“Oh”—he knocked a stone out of his way with his umbrella—“what's the use denying it! I'm simply jealous. I'm only a natural human being, and I suppose I'm jealous.”
“You have no cause to be,” she said, and then she bit her lip with vexation at the slip of the tongue. Why should she defend herself to him? She had never said she loved him. She had not yet consented to marry him. Besides, she was in no mood to gratify his vanity. She wanted simply to be alone with the boundless delight she was allowed to share with no one but—Carson—Carson!—the one who had, for her sake, made the sharing of it possible.