“I sold myself to him for money!” she panted.  “Oh, God, for money!”

But then suddenly she raised herself up and stared about her, crying out, half-hysterically, “No, no, it is not true!  It is not true!  I could never have done it—­I should have gone mad!” And a moment later Helen had staggered to her feet.  “I must tell him,” she gasped.  “He must not think so of me!”

Mr. Howard had come to her as a vision from a higher world, making all that she had known and admired seem hideous and base; and her one thought just then was of him.  “He will still scorn me,” she thought, “but I must tell him I really did suffer.”  And heedless of the fact that her hair was loose about her shoulders and her dress wet with the dew of the grass, the girl ran swiftly up the lawn towards the house, whispering again and again, “I must tell him!”

It was only a minute more before she was near the piazza, and could see the people upon it as they stood in the lighted doorway.  Mr. Howard was one of them, and Helen would have rushed blindly up to speak to him, had it not been that another thought came to her to stop her.

“Suppose he should know of Arthur!” she muttered, clenching her hands until the nails cut her flesh.  “Oh, what would he think then?  And what could I tell him?” And she shrank back into the darkness, like a black and guilty thing.  She crept around the side of the house and entered by another door, stealing into one of the darkened parlors, where she flung herself down upon a sofa and lay trembling before that new terror.  When a few minutes had passed and she heard a carriage outside, she sprang up wildly, with the thought that he might be going.  She had run half way to the door before she recollected that the carriage must be for the lieutenant, and then she stopped and stood still in the darkness, twisting her hands together nervously and asking herself what she could do.

It occurred to her that she could look down the piazza from the window of the room, and so she went swiftly to it.  The officer was just descending to the carriage, Mr. Roberts with him, and her aunt and Mr. Howard standing at the top of the steps, the latter’s figure clearly outlined in the moonlight.  Helen’s heart was so full of despair and yearning just then that she could have rushed out and flung herself at his feet, had he been alone; but she felt a new kind of shrinking from her aunt.  She stood hesitating, therefore, muttering to herself, “I must let him know about it somehow, and he will tell me what to do.  Oh, I MUST!  And I must tell him now, before it is too late!”

She stood by the window, panting and almost choking with her emotion, kneading her hands one upon the other in frenzied agitation; and then she heard Mr. Howard say to her aunt, “I shall have to ask you to excuse me now, for I must not forget that I am an invalid.”  And Helen clutched her burning temples, seeing him turn to enter the house, and seeing that her chance was going.  She glanced around her, almost desperate, and then suddenly her heart gave a great leap, for just beside her was something that had brought one resource to her mind.  She had seen the piano in the dim light, and had thought suddenly of the song that Mr. Howard had mentioned.