“Yes,” Helen assented without looking up; “if it keeps on happening with such startling regularity I shall begin to expect it, and then your theory will lose its point.”
Uncle Peabody was in a thoughtful rather than an argumentative mood.
“If I was not afraid you would think me heartless, Helen, I would say that I believe I see the hand of Providence in this.”
She looked up quickly.
“Of course, assuming that Jack recovers,” he hastened to add.
“I am afraid my philosophy is hardly equal to this test,” Helen replied, unsympathetically. “I am supremely happy that the affair is not so serious as it seemed at first, but I can’t see anything particularly providential in the injury poor Jack has sustained, nor in the suffering he must pass through at best.”
“Is it not just possible that this long period of convalescence, which Dr. Montgomery says is inevitable, may bring him to himself again?”
Helen smiled sadly. “It was the work at the library which brought him to himself, uncle. A separation from those influences which so strongly affected him there may result in a return to the old self I knew before we came here; but that is not his real self.”
“If he returns to that condition, no matter what brings it about, will it not simplify matters?”
“I can’t see how,” replied Helen, seriously. “If I had never known this new development in Jack’s nature, I should of course be quite content to have him return to his former self; but having seen him as he really is, I could never accept any condition which allows him no development of his higher and stronger personality. It would not be fair either to him or to me.”