“I do not need to know,” he answered gravely.  “You are as genuine as pure gold is genuine—­it is in your voice, your smile, your eyes.  It is a crude simile perhaps, but one never asks where the pure gold was dug—­it stands for itself, for what it is, because it is what it is—­pure gold—­at its face value.”

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 has come to mean everything to me now.  You may not love me now, but some day—­”

She shook her head, interrupting him once more.

“There can never be a ‘some day,’” she said.  “Oh, I do not want to hurt you—­you, to whom I owe more than you will ever know—­but—­but there can never be anything between us, and—­and we are only making it harder for ourselves now—­aren’t we?”

And then he leaned abruptly toward her.

“Is there—­some one else?” he asked in a strained voice.

And to Helena the question came as though it had been an inspiration given him—­for after that he would ask no more, seek no more to understand, for he was too big and strong and fine for that; and even if it was hopeless now this love that she had known for Madison, even if it could never be again, still that love was hers, and she could answer truthfully.

“Yes,” she said beneath her breath.

For a moment Thornton neither moved nor spoke.  Then he held out his hand.

“Miss Vail,” he said simply, “will you tell this ‘some one else’ that another man beside himself is the better for having known you.  Good-night.  And may God bring you happiness through all your life.”