Helen Travers made no moan, exacted no sympathy. She had come alone to the parting of the ways, and she had thought only for the boy whom she had mothered tenderly and successfully. Ledyard did not interrupt the gentle flow of her thoughts. There was time; he would not startle or hurry her, although her first statement had shocked and surprised him beyond measure.

"I've always thought of myself as like one of those poor Asiatic hornbills," she was saying. "It seems to me that all my life long some one has walled me up in a nice, safe nest and fed me through my longings and desires. I cannot get to life first hand. I'm not stupid exactly, but I am terribly limited." Helen paused, then went on more rapidly: "First it was my father. He and I travelled after mother's death continually, and alone. He educated me and interpreted life for me; he was a man of the world, I suppose, but he managed to keep me most unworldly wise. Of course I knew, abstractly, the lights and shadows; but I wonder if you will believe me when I tell you that, until after my marriage, I never suspected that—that certain codes of honour and dishonour had place in the lives of those closest to me? The evil of the world was classified and pigeon-holed for me. I even had ambition to get out of my walled-up condition and help some mystical people, detached and far from my safe, clean corner. Father left me more money than was good for any young woman, and my simple impulse was to use it properly."

"You were very young?" Ledyard interrupted.

Helen Travers shook her head.

"Not very. I was twenty-four when I married. I had never had but one intimate friend in my life, and to her I went at my father's death. It was her brother I married—John Travers."

Ledyard nodded his head; he knew of the Traverses—the older generation.

"This thing concerning Dick occurred some three or four years before my marriage. My wedding was a very quiet one; it was not reported, and that accounted for Dick's mother—Elizabeth Thornton—not knowing of it.

"It seems that there had been an alliance between John Travers and—and Dick's mother, and it had been terminated some time before he met me, by mutual consent. There was the child—Dick. The mother took him. There was no question of money: there was enough for them, but she had told John that should anything arise, such as illness or disaster, she would call upon him. They had sworn that to each other.

"Well, my own baby came a year after my marriage and died a month later. When I was least able to bear the shock, the call came from Elizabeth Thornton. John had to tell me. I shall never forget his face as he did it. I realized that his chief concern was for me, and even in all the wreck and ruin I could but honour him for his bravery and sincerity. I think he believed I would understand, but I never did; I never shall. The shock was more surprise than moral resentment. I could not believe at first that such a thing could possibly happen to—one of my own. I felt as if a plague had fallen upon me, and I shrank from every eye, from every touch with the world.

"Doctor Ledyard, you can understand, I hope, but John Travers was not a bad man, and that girl, Dick's mother, was good. Yes; that's the only word to use, strange as it seems to me even after all these years. You see, she was not a hornbill. She came in touch with life at first hand; she took from life what she wanted; she had, what were to me, unheard-of ideas about love and the free gift of self, and yet she never meant to hurt any one; and she had kept herself, amid all the confusion, the gentlest and sweetest of souls.

"When she sent for John she was dying and she did not know what to do about the boy. She had no family—no near friend.

"I went with my husband to see her. There did not seem to be anything else to do. I had no feeling; it was plain duty. Even with the touch of death upon her, Elizabeth Thornton was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I cannot describe the sensation she made upon me; but she was like an innocent, pure child who had played with harmful and soiled toys but had come wearily to the day's end, herself unsullied.

"When she knew about me she was broken-hearted. She wept and called to little Dick, who sat in a small chair by her couch:

"'Oh! little son, we could have managed, couldn't we? We would not have hurt any one for the world, would we, sonny?' And the boy got up and soothed her as a man might have done, and he was only a little creature. I think I loved him from the moment I saw him shielding that poor, dying mother from her own folly. 'Course, mummy, course!' he repeated over and again. Then he looked at me with the eyes of my own dead baby. Both children were startlingly like the father. The look pleaded for mercy from me to them—John, the mother, and the little fellow himself. And I, who had vaguely meant to help the world some day, began—with them! Just for a little time after Elizabeth Thornton's death I became human, or perhaps inhuman. I resented the wrong that had been done me; I wanted to fling John and the child away from me; but then a sense of power rallied me. I had never tasted it before. I could cast the helpless pair from me, or—I could save them from the world and the world's hideous pity for me. I accepted the burden laid upon me. I think John thought I would forget, would forgive. I cannot explain—my sort of woman is never understood by—well, John's sort of man. I am afraid he grew to have a contempt for me, but I lived on loving them both, but never becoming able to meet John's hope of me. I knew he was often lonely—I have pitied him since—but I could not help being what I was.

"I tried, but it was no use. We lived abroad for years, and little Dick forgot—I am sure he forgot—his mother, and when I felt secure I gave him all, all the passion and devotion of my life.

"John died abroad; I came home with my crippled boy; came home to—you. That is all!"

Ledyard bent and laid a handful of boughs upon the fire. The room was cold and cheerless, and the still, white figure in the chair seemed the quiet, chill heart of it all. And yet—how she had loved and laboured for the boy! Was she passionless or had her passion been killed while at white heat?

"And—and I suppose Dick must know?"

"Yes. Dick must know."

There was no sternness, but there was determination in the strong, even voice. Then:

"Helen, let me do this for you!"

For a moment the uplifted eyes faltered and fell away from the man's face. Very faintly the words came:

"God bless you! I could not bear to see—him fail me. If he must—fail, I cannot see him until—afterward."

The blaze rose higher, and the dark room was a background for that deathlike form before the hearth.

Ledyard left the room silently, and a moment later Helen Travers heard his heavy footfall on the porch outside. Presently the erratic violin playing ceased and there seemed no sound on the face of the earth.

After what seemed hours, Pine, the guide, entered the room to replenish the fire, and Helen told him he need not light the lamps. After his going another aching silence followed through which, at last, stole the consciousness that she was not alone. Some one had come into the room from a long window opening on the piazza. Helen dared not look, for if it were Ledyard she would know that things were very bad indeed. Then came the slightly dragging step that she had learned to be so grateful for after the helplessness of crippled childhood. Still she did not move, nor deeply hope. The boy was kind, oh! so tenderly kind, he might only have come because he must!

The red glow of the fire made the woman's form by the hearth vividly distinct, and toward that Dick Travers went as if led by a gleam through a new and strange experience. He knelt by her side and, for a moment, buried his face against her clasped hands; then he looked up and she saw only intensified love and trust upon his young face. She waited