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 mantel-piece, 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 held in her life.  Even if she had seen him but seldom, the fact that he was within call had been more of a comfort and a necessity to her than she understood.

That he was poor, concerned her chiefly because she knew that, although this condition could only be but temporary, it would distress him not to have his friends around him, and to entertain them as he had been used to do.  She wondered eagerly if she might offer to help him, but a second thought assured her that, for a man, that sort of help from a woman was impossible.

She resented the fact that Marion was deep in his confidence; that it was Marion who had told her of his changed condition and of his plans.  It annoyed her so acutely that she could not remain in the room where she had seen her so complacently in possession.  And after leaving a brief note for Philip, she went away.  She stopped a hansom at the door, and told the man to drive along the Embankment—­she wanted to be quite alone, and she felt she could see no one until she had thought it all out, and had analyzed the new feelings.

So for several hours she drove slowly up and down, sunk far back in the cushions of the cab, and staring with unseeing eyes at the white, enamelled tariff and the black dash-board.

She assured herself that she was not jealous of Marion, because, in order to be jealous, she first would have to care for Philip in the very way she could not bring herself to do.