“Helen,” he said, with another desperate tearless sob, “oh, to think that you had to go through that—­alone!”

“My darling boy,” she answered, “don’t worry about that!  It is all over, now; and it is so true—­oh, so true, Ronnie—­that the anguish is no more remembered in the greatness of the joy.”

“But I can’t forget,” said Ronnie—­“I shall never forget—­that my wife bore the suffering, the danger, the weakness, and I was not there to share it.  I did not even know what she was going through.”

“Ronnie dear—­think of your little son.”

“I can think of nothing of mine just yet,” he answered, “excepting of my wife.”

She gave in to his mood, and waited; letting him hold her close in perfect silence.

It was strangely sweet to Helen, because it was so completely unexpected.  She had been prepared for a moment of intense surprise, followed by a rapture of pride and delight; then a wild rush to the nursery to see his first-born.  She was quite willing, now her part was over, that her part should be forgotten.  It was as unexpected as it was comfortingly precious, that Ronnie should be thus stricken by the thought of her pain, and of her need of him to help her bear it.

At last he said:  “Helen, I see it all now.  It was the Upas tree indeed:  utterly, preposterously, altogether, selfish!”

“My darling, no!” she cried.  “Oh, don’t be so unjust to yourself!  When I used those terrible words, I thought you had had my letter, had come home knowing it all, yet absorbed completely in other things.  Misled by Aubrey, I cruelly misjudged you, Ronnie.  It was not selfish to go; it was not selfish to be away.  You did not know, or you would not have gone.  I was glad you should not know, glad you should be away, so that I could bear it alone, without hindering your work; letting you find the joy when you reached home, without having had any of the hardness or the worry.  I wished it to be so, my darling boy—­and I was glad.”

Then Ronnie gently put his wife out of his arms, and took her sweet face between his hands, looking long into her eyes, before he made reply.  And Helen, steadfastly returning his gaze, saw a look growing in her husband’s face, such as she had never yet seen there, and knew, even before he began to speak, what he was going to say; and her protective love, longing as ever to shield him from pain, cried out:  “Oh, must I let him realise that?”

But, at last, through the guidance of wiser Hands than hers, the matter had passed beyond Helen’s control.

“My wife,” said Ronnie slowly, “when I called it ‘the Upas tree indeed,’ I did not mean the one act of going off in ignorance and leaving you alone during the whole of that time, when any man who cared at all would wish to be at hand, to bear, and share, and guard.  I do not brand that as selfish; because you purposely withheld from me the truth, and bid me go.  But why