--XVII--

IN WHICH HELENA TAKES A RIDE


The wind kissed Helena's face, bringing dainty color to her cheeks,
tossing truant wisps of hair this way and that, as the car swept onward.
But she sat strangely silent now beside Thornton at the steering wheel.

It seemed to her that she was living, not her own life, not life as she
had known and looked upon it in the years before, but living, as it
were, in a strange, suspended state that was neither real nor unreal, as
in a dream that led her, now through cool, deep forests, beside clear,
sparkling streams where all was a great peace and the soul was at rest,
serene, untroubled, now into desolate places where misery had its birth
and shame was, where there was fear, and the mind stood staggered and
appalled and lost and knew not how to guide her that she might flee from
it all.

At moments most unexpected, as now when motoring with Thornton in the
car that he had brought back with him on, his return to Needley, when
laughing at the Flopper's determined pursuit of Mamie Rodgers, when
engaged in the homely, practical details of housekeeping about the
cottage, there came flashing suddenly upon her the picture of Mrs.
Thornton lying on the brass bed in the car compartment that night, every
line of the pale, gentle face as vivid, as actual as though it were once
more before her in reality, and in her ears rang again, stabbing her
with their unmeant condemnation, those words of sweetness, love and