times indeed he felt as if he were speaking to him immediately--and
to him only; at others, although then he saw her no more than him,
that he was comforting the sister individually, in holding out to
her brother the mighty hope of a restored purity. And when once more
his mind could receive the messages brought home by his eyes, he saw
upon Helen's face the red sunset of a rapt listening. True it was
already fading away, but the eyes had wept, the glow yet hung about
cheek and forehead, and the firm mouth had forgotten itself into a
tremulous form, which the stillness of absorption had there for the
moment fixed.

But even already, although he could not yet read it upon her
countenance, a snake had begun to lift its head from the chaotic
swamp which runs a creek at least into every soul, the rudimentary
desolation, a remnant of the time when the world was without form
and void. And the snake said: "Why, then, did he not speak like that
to my Leopold? Why did he not comfort him with such a good hope,
well-becoming a priest of the gentle Jesus? Or, if he fancied he
must speak of confession, why did he not speak of it in plain honest
terms, instead of suggesting the idea of it so that the poor boy
imagined it came from his own spirit, and must therefore be obeyed
as the will of God?"

So said the snake, and by the time Helen had walked home with her
aunt, the glow had sunk from her soul, and a gray wintry mist had
settled down upon her spirit. And she said to herself that if this
last hope in George should fail her, she would not allow the matter
to trouble her any farther; she was a free woman, and as Leopold had
chosen other counsellors, had thus declared her unworthy of
confidence, and, after all that she had suffered and done for love