She hated to ask this girl of things which she should have known
better than any one else. But she forced herself to do it. She
felt she must know certainly and at once.

"How do you know this?" she asked. "Are you sure there is no
mistake?"

"He told me himself," said Marion, "when he talked of letting the
plays go and returning to America. He said he must go back;
that his money was gone."

"He is gone to America!" Helen said, blankly.

"No, he wanted to go, but I wouldn't let him," Marion went on.
"I told him that some one might take his play any day. And this
third one he has written, the one he finished this summer in
town, is the best of all, I think. It's a love-story. It's
quite beautiful." She turned and arranged her veil at the glass,
and as she did so, her eyes fell on the photographs of herself
scattered over the mantelpiece, and she smiled slightly. But
Helen did not see her--she was sitting down now, pulling at the
books on the table. She was confused and disturbed by emotions
which were quite strange to her, and when Marion bade her good-by
she hardly noticed her departure. What impressed her most of all
in what Marion had told her, was, she was surprised to find, that
Philip was going away. That she herself had frequently urged him
to do so, for his own peace of mind, seemed now of no
consequence. Now that he seriously contemplated it, she
recognized that his absence meant to her a change in
everything. She felt for the first time the peculiar place he