For a long moment there was silence, then H lne said:  “You love her, Lew?  You’re sure you love her?”

Lewis nodded his head vehemently.

“And you’re sure she loves you?” asked H lne.

“Yes,” said Lewis, not so positively.  “In her way she does.  She says she’s wanted me from the first day she saw me.”

H lne sat down.  She held one knee in her locked hands.  Her face was half turned from Lewis.  She was staring out through the narrow, Gothic panes of the broad window.  Her face was still pale and set.  Lewis’s eyes swept over her.  Her beauty struck him as never before.  Something had been added to it.  H lne seemed to him a girl, a frail girl.  How could he ever have thought this Woman worldly!  Her fragrance reached him.  It was a fragrance that had no weight, but it bound him—­bound him hand and foot in its gossamer web.  He felt that he ought to struggle, but that he did not wish to.  He waited for H lne to speak.

“Love,” she said at last, “is a terrible thing.  Young people don’t know what a terrible thing it is.  We talk about the word ‘love’ being so abused.  We think we abuse it, but it’s love that abuses itself.  There are so many kinds of love, and every big family is bound to include a certain number of rotters.  Love isn’t terrible through the things we do to it; it’s terrible for the things it does to us.”

H lne paused.

“I’m glad you saw what you did to-day because it will make it easier for you to understand.  Tour father loves me, and I love him.  It’s not the love of youth.  It’s the love of sanity.  The love of sanity is a fine, stalwart love, but it hasn’t the unnamable sweetness or the ineffaceable bitterness of the love of youth.  Years ago your father wanted to take me away from—­from what you saw.  There did not seem to be any reason why we should not go.  He and I—­we’re not wedded to any place or to any time.  We have a World that’s ours alone.  We could take it with us wherever we went.”

“H lne,” whispered Lewis, “why didn’t you go?”

“H lne unlocked her hands, put them on the lounge at her sides, and stayed herself on them.  She stared at the floor.

“We didn’t go,” she said, “because of the terrible things that love—­bitter love—­had done to us.”

She turned luminous eyes toward Lewis.

“You say you love Folly; you think she loves you.  Lew, perhaps, she is your pal to-day.  Will she be your pal always?  You know what a pal is.  You’ve told me about that little girl Natalie.  A pal is one who can’t do wrong, who can’t go wrong, who can’t grow wrong.  Your pal is you—­your blood, your body, your soul.  Is Folly your blood, your body, your soul?  If she is, she’ll grow finer and finer and you will, too, and years and time and place will fade away before the greatest battle-cry the world has ever known—­’We’re partners.’”

H lne turned her eyes away.

“But if you’re not really pals for always, the one that doesn’t care will grow coarse.  If it’s Folly, her past will seize upon her.  She’ll run from your condemning eyes, but you—­you can’t run from your own soul.