The words seemed to stab at Helena, condemning, accusing; and yet, too,
in a strange, vague way, they seemed to bring her a hope, a promise for
the days to come--at face value! If she could live hereafter--at face
value!

"Listen," she said, and her voice was very low. "I do not know how to
say what I must say to you. Last night I knew that--that you loved me. I
had not thought of you like that, in that way, until then, or--or I
should have tried never to have let this hurt come to you. But last
night I knew, and since then I have known that sooner or later you
would--would tell me of it." She stopped for an instant--her eyes full
of tears now. "And so," she went on presently, "I have let you speak
to-night because it was better, it was even necessary that I should do
so at once--because this could not go on--because you must go away
and--"

"Necessary?" he repeated. "I--I do not understand."

"No," she said helplessly; "you do not understand--and I--I cannot
explain. Oh, I do not know what to say to you, only that you must take
what I say, as you have taken me--at face value."

"I do not understand," he said again. "Helena, I do not understand. Are
you in trouble--tell me?"

"No," she said.

"But I cannot go away like this!" he cried out suddenly. "I cannot go
and leave you, Helena. You have come into my life and filled it; and I
cannot let you pass out of it--like this--without an effort to hold what